Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAS), also known as drones, offer countless use cases in today’s connected world. On the one hand, they can deliver goods and services, while on the other hand, they may provide situational awareness in emergency scenarios. The aerial viewpoint can also be beneficial in agriculture, powerline and wind turbine inspection, as well as communication enhancements.

With the Autonomous Systems Lab of the Institute, we are involved in different application fields of UASs. In the BMBF project MOMENTUM a multicopter UAS is used as a mobile network relay in emergency rescue missions. The Autonomous Offshore Drone project aims to develop a concept for the automatic inspection of offshore wind turbines using UASs. Within the scope of the project Baltic Future Port,  a local 5G network at the port of Lübeck is established and monitored using an autonomous UAS mapping system. Further information on current UAS projects can be found on the subpages.

Our primary focus in all research involving UAS is safety during autonomous or semi-autonomous operation. Our research includes using our expertise in modern control architectures for autonomous cars. We integrate models for disturbances like wind or payloads to help in aerial challenges.

Racing

As part of the lab course Robotics and Automation a car race of autonomous vehicles is held annually. The students compete each other with their self-assembled cars and their own optimized control scheme. 

Model Predictive Control

Model Predictive Control (MPC) predicts and optimizes time-varying processes over a future time horizon. MPC is used for trajectory following of a model car. It is extended to consider lane borders and obstacles on a racing track during the driving process. A toolkit for optimal control is used inside a Robotic Operating System (ROS) on the car's hardware to realize the wanted behavior in real-time.