Publications

In our recent Nature article, we developed a new theory on how flying drones and insects can estimate gravity direction by combining visual motion sensing with a model of how they move. This discovery forms a parsimonious explanation of multiple phenomena observed in biology and is also an important step for the creation of autonomous tiny drones with even fewer sensors. 

Guido C. H. E. Croon, Julien J. G. Dupeyroux, Christophe De Wagter, Abhishek Chatterjee, Diana A. Olejnik, Franck Ruffier: Accommodating unobservability to control flight attitude with optic flow. In: Nature: international weekly journal of science, vol. 610, no. 7932, pp. 485–490, 2022, ISSN: 0028-0836.
 

Nature Machine Intelligence Paper

Whereas insects seem to control their flight effortlessly with the help of optical flow, robots that attempt to do the same run into problems. We propose as a solution a learning process that allows robots to see distances by means of visual appearance (colors, textures, shapes). Would it be possible that insects do the same?

The article is featured on the cover of Nature Machine Intelligence. Cover reprinted by permission from Springer Nature.

G.C.H.E. de Croon, C. De Wagter, T. Seidl: Enhancing optical-flow-based control by learning visual appearance cues for flying robots. In: Nature Machine Intelligence, vol. 3, no. 1, 2021.

Science Robotics Paper

Our recent paper in Science Robotics presents the first swarm of tiny robots that can explore unknown environments completely by themselves. No map, no memory, and no GPS! The full paper can be found here.

K N McGuire, C De Wagter, K Tuyls, H J Kappen, G C H E de Croon: Minimal navigation solution for a swarm of tiny flying robots to explore an unknown environment. In: Science Robotics, vol. 4, no. 35, 2019.

 

Delfly Book

 

 

Our book about the DelFly has been published! The book introduces the topics most relevant to autonomously flying flapping-wing robots: flapping-wing design, aerodynamics, and artificial intelligence.

 

G C H E de Croon, Mustafa Percin, B D W Remes, Rick Ruijsink, C De Wagter: The DelFly - Design, Aerodynamics, and Artificial Intelligence of a Flapping Wing Robot. Springer Netherlands, 2016, ISBN: 978-94-017-9207-3.

 

Science paper

 

 

The Delfly Nimble was featured on the cover of Science Magazine in September 2018.

 

Matěj Karásek, Florian T Muijres, Christophe De Wagter, Bart D W Remes, Guido C H E de Croon: A tailless aerial robotic flapper reveals that flies use torque coupling in rapid banked turns. In: Science, vol. 361, no. 6407, pp. 1089–1094, 2018, ISSN: 0036-8075.

 

 

 

 

 

All publications

512 entries « 1 of 11 »

2023

Journal Articles

G.C.H.E. de Croon

Drone-racing champions outpaced by AI (Journal Article)

In: Nature, vol. 620, pp. 952-954, 2023, ISBN: 0028-0836.

(Abstract | Links | BibTeX)

Andrew J. King; Steven J. Portugal; Daniel Strömbom; Richard P. Mann; José A. Carrillo; Dante Kalise; Guido Croon; Heather Barnett; Paul Scerri; More Authors

Biologically inspired herding of animal groups by robots (Journal Article)

In: Methods in Ecology and Evolution, 2023, ISSN: 2041-210X.

(Links | BibTeX)

A. Altena; J. J. Beers; C. C. Visser

Loss-of-Control Prediction of a Quadcopter Using Recurrent Neural Networks (Journal Article)

In: Journal of Aerospace Information Systems (online), 2023, ISSN: 2327-3097.

(Links | BibTeX)

Alessandro Mancinelli; Bart D. W. Remes; Guido C. H. E. De Croon; Ewoud J. J. Smeur

Real-Time Nonlinear Control Allocation Framework for Vehicles with Highly Nonlinear Effectors Subject to Saturation (Journal Article)

In: Journal of Intelligent and Robotic Systems: Theory and Applications, vol. 108, no. 4, 2023, ISSN: 0921-0296.

(Links | BibTeX)

T. M. Blaha; E. J. J. Smeur; B. D. W. Remes

A Survey of Optimal Control Allocation for Aerial Vehicle Control (Journal Article)

In: Actuators, vol. 12, no. 7, 2023, ISSN: 2076-0825.

(Links | BibTeX)

Christina Harvey; G. C. H. E. Croon; Graham K. Taylor; Richard J. Bomphrey

Lessons from natural flight for aviation: then, now and tomorrow (Journal Article)

In: The Journal of Experimental Biology, vol. 226, no. 1, 2023, ISSN: 0022-0949.

(Links | BibTeX)

M. K. Makaveev; M. Snellen; E. J. J. Smeur

Microphones as Airspeed Sensors for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (Journal Article)

In: Sensors, vol. 23, no. 5, 2023, ISSN: 1424-8220.

(Links | BibTeX)

G. C. H. E. Croon; W. Hönig; G. Theraulaz; G. Vásárhelyi

Cross-disciplinary approaches for designing intelligent swarms of drones (Journal Article)

In: Swarm Intelligence, vol. 17, no. 1-2, pp. 1–4, 2023, ISSN: 1935-3812, (Green Open Access added to TU Delft Institutional Repository ‘You share, we take care!’ – Taverne project https://www.openaccess.nl/en/you-share-we-take-care Otherwise as indicated in the copyright section: the publisher is the copyright holder of this work and the author uses the Dutch legislation to make this work public.).

(Links | BibTeX)

Proceedings Articles

W. J. E. Völker; Y. Li; E. Kampen

Twin-Delayed Deep Deterministic Policy Gradient for altitude control of a flying-wing aircraft with an uncertain aerodynamic model (Proceedings Article)

In: AIAA SciTech Forum 2023, 2023, (AIAA SCITECH 2023 Forum ; Conference date: 23-01-2023 Through 27-01-2023).

(Links | BibTeX)

Kartik Suryavanshi; S. Hamaza; V. Wijk; J. L. Herder

ADAPT: A 3 Degrees of Freedom Reconfigurable Force Balanced Parallel Manipulator for Aerial Applications (Proceedings Article)

In: Proceedings IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, ICRA 2023, pp. 11936–11942, IEEE, United States, 2023, ISBN: 979-8-3503-2365-8, (ICRA 2023: International Conference on Robotics and Automation ; Conference date: 29-05-2023 Through 02-06-2023).

(Links | BibTeX)

Sunyou Hwang; Bart D. W. Remes; Guido C. H. E. Croon

AOSoar: Autonomous Orographic Soaring of a Micro Air Vehicle (Proceedings Article)

In: 2023.

(Links | BibTeX)

Anique Altena; Salil Luesutthiviboon; Guido Croon; Mirjam Snellen; Mark Voskuijl

Comparison of acoustic localisation techniques for drone position estimation using real-world experimental data (Proceedings Article)

In: Carletti, Eleonora (Ed.): Proceedings of the 29th International Congress on Sound and Vibration, ICSV 2023, Society of Acoustics, 2023, (29th International Congress on Sound and Vibration, ICSV 2023 : The annual congress of the International Institute of Acoustics and Vibrations (IIAV), ICSV 2023 ; Conference date: 09-07-2023 Through 13-07-2023).

(Links | BibTeX)

Cheng Liu; Erik Jan Van Kampen; Guido C. H. E. De Croon

Adaptive Risk-Tendency: Nano Drone Navigation in Cluttered Environments with Distributional Reinforcement Learning (Proceedings Article)

In: Proceedings - ICRA 2023, pp. 7198–7204, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), United States, 2023, (Green Open Access added to TU Delft Institutional Repository ‘You share, we take care!’ – Taverne project https://www.openaccess.nl/en/you-share-we-take-care Otherwise as indicated in the copyright section: the publisher is the copyright holder of this work and the author uses the Dutch legislation to make this work public. ; 2023 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, ICRA 2023 ; Conference date: 29-05-2023 Through 02-06-2023).

(Links | BibTeX)

Rik J. Bouwmeester; Federico Paredes-Valles; Guido C. H. E. De Croon

NanoFlowNet: Real-time Dense Optical Flow on a Nano Quadcopter (Proceedings Article)

In: Proceedings - ICRA 2023, pp. 1996–2003, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), United States, 2023, (Green Open Access added to TU Delft Institutional Repository ‘You share, we take care!’ – Taverne project https://www.openaccess.nl/en/you-share-we-take-care Otherwise as indicated in the copyright section: the publisher is the copyright holder of this work and the author uses the Dutch legislation to make this work public. ; 2023 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, ICRA 2023 ; Conference date: 29-05-2023 Through 02-06-2023).

(Links | BibTeX)

Tom Suys; Sunyou Hwang; Guido C. H. E. De Croon; Bart D. W. Remes

Autonomous Control for Orographic Soaring of Fixed-Wing UAVs (Proceedings Article)

In: Proceedings - ICRA 2023, pp. 5338–5344, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), United States, 2023, (Green Open Access added to TU Delft Institutional Repository ‘You share, we take care!’ – Taverne project https://www.openaccess.nl/en/you-share-we-take-care Otherwise as indicated in the copyright section: the publisher is the copyright holder of this work and the author uses the Dutch legislation to make this work public. ; 2023 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, ICRA 2023 ; Conference date: 29-05-2023 Through 02-06-2023).

(Links | BibTeX)

Hang Yu; Guido C. H. E. De Croon; Christophe De Wagter

AvoidBench: A high-fidelity vision-based obstacle avoidance benchmarking suite for multi-rotors (Proceedings Article)

In: Proceedings - ICRA 2023, pp. 9183–9189, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), United States, 2023, (Green Open Access added to TU Delft Institutional Repository ‘You share, we take care!’ – Taverne project https://www.openaccess.nl/en/you-share-we-take-care Otherwise as indicated in the copyright section: the publisher is the copyright holder of this work and the author uses the Dutch legislation to make this work public. ; 2023 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, ICRA 2023 ; Conference date: 29-05-2023 Through 02-06-2023).

(Links | BibTeX)

Yifei Li; Erik Jan van Kampen

Incremental Generalized Policy Iteration for Adaptive Attitude Tracking Control of a Spacecraft (Proceedings Article)

In: 2023 European Control Conference, ECC 2023, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), United States, 2023, (Green Open Access added to TU Delft Institutional Repository ‘You share, we take care!’ – Taverne project https://www.openaccess.nl/en/you-share-we-take-care Otherwise as indicated in the copyright section: the publisher is the copyright holder of this work and the author uses the Dutch legislation to make this work public. ; 2023 European Control Conference, ECC 2023 ; Conference date: 13-06-2023 Through 16-06-2023).

(Links | BibTeX)

Gervase H. L. H. Lovell-Prescod; Ziqing Ma; Ewoud J. J. Smeur

Attitude Control of a Tilt-rotor Tailsitter Micro Air Vehicle Using Incremental Control (Proceedings Article)

In: 2023 International Conference on Unmanned Aircraft Systems, ICUAS 2023, pp. 842–849, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), United States, 2023, (Green Open Access added to TU Delft Institutional Repository ‘You share, we take care!’ – Taverne project https://www.openaccess.nl/en/you-share-we-take-care Otherwise as indicated in the copyright section: the publisher is the copyright holder of this work and the author uses the Dutch legislation to make this work public. ; 2023 International Conference on Unmanned Aircraft Systems, ICUAS 2023 ; Conference date: 06-06-2023 Through 09-06-2023).

(Links | BibTeX)

T. M. L. De Ponti; E. J. J. Smeur; B. W. D. Remes

Incremental Nonlinear Dynamic Inversion controller for a Variable Skew Quad Plane (Proceedings Article)

In: 2023 International Conference on Unmanned Aircraft Systems, ICUAS 2023, pp. 241–248, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), United States, 2023, (Green Open Access added to TU Delft Institutional Repository ‘You share, we take care!’ – Taverne project https://www.openaccess.nl/en/you-share-we-take-care Otherwise as indicated in the copyright section: the publisher is the copyright holder of this work and the author uses the Dutch legislation to make this work public. ; 2023 International Conference on Unmanned Aircraft Systems, ICUAS 2023 ; Conference date: 06-06-2023 Through 09-06-2023).

(Links | BibTeX)

Y. Li; E. Kampen

Adaptive Optimal Flight Control for a Fixed-wing Unmanned Aerial Vehicle using Incremental Value Iteration (Proceedings Article)

In: 2023 IEEE International Conference on Mechatronics, 2023, ISBN: 978-1-6654-6662-2, (Green Open Access added to TU Delft Institutional Repository ‘You share, we take care!’ – Taverne project https://www.openaccess.nl/en/you-share-we-take-care Otherwise as indicated in the copyright section: the publisher is the copyright holder of this work and the author uses the Dutch legislation to make this work public. ; 2023 IEEE International Conference on Mechatronics (ICM), ICM 2023 ; Conference date: 15-03-2023 Through 17-03-2023).

(Links | BibTeX)

Masters Theses

Momchil Makaveev

Microphones as Airspeed Sensors for Micro Air Vehicles (Masters Thesis)

TU Delft Aerospace Engineering, 2023, (Smeur, E.J.J. (mentor); Delft University of Technology (degree granting institution)).

(Abstract | Links | BibTeX)

Ruben Meester

Frustumbug: a 3D Mapless Stereo-Vision-based Bug Algorithm for Micro Air Vehicles (Masters Thesis)

TU Delft Aerospace Engineering, 2023, (de Croon, G.C.H.E. (mentor); van Dijk, Tom (mentor); de Wagter, C. (graduation committee); Verhoeven, C.J.M. (graduation committee); Delft University of Technology (degree granting institution)).

(Abstract | Links | BibTeX)

Raoul Mink

Deep Vision-based Relative Localisation by Monocular Drones (Masters Thesis)

TU Delft Aerospace Engineering, 2023, (de Croon, G.C.H.E. (mentor); de Wagter, C. (graduation committee); Zarouchas, D. (graduation committee); Delft University of Technology (degree granting institution)).

(Abstract | Links | BibTeX)

Till Blaha

Computationally Efficient Control Allocation Using Active-Set Algorithms (Masters Thesis)

TU Delft Aerospace Engineering, 2023, (Smeur, E.J.J. (mentor); Remes, B.D.W. (graduation committee); Delft University of Technology (degree granting institution)).

(Abstract | Links | BibTeX)

Xander Beurden

Stability control and positional water jet placement for a novel tethered unmanned hydro-propelled aerial vehicle using real-time water jet detection (Masters Thesis)

TU Delft Aerospace Engineering, 2023, (de Wagter, C. (mentor); Delft University of Technology (degree granting institution)).

(Abstract | Links | BibTeX)

Tim Burgers

Evolving Spiking Neural Networks to Mimic PID Control: Applied to Autonomous Blimps (Masters Thesis)

TU Delft Aerospace Engineering, 2023, (de Croon, G.C.H.E. (mentor); Stroobants, S. (mentor); de Wagter, C. (graduation committee); Bombelli, A. (graduation committee); Delft University of Technology (degree granting institution)).

(Abstract | Links | BibTeX)

Seamus McGinley

Vision-guided Quadrotor Perching on Imperfectly Cylindrical Structures (Masters Thesis)

TU Delft Aerospace Engineering, 2023, (Hamaza, S. (mentor); Delft University of Technology (degree granting institution)).

(Abstract | Links | BibTeX)

Michiel Firlefyn

Direct Learning of Home Vector Direction: Incited by Existing Insect-Inspired Approaches for Local Navigation and Wayfinding (Masters Thesis)

TU Delft Aerospace Engineering, 2023, (de Croon, G.C.H.E. (mentor); Hagenaars, J.J. (mentor); Delft University of Technology (degree granting institution)).

(Abstract | Links | BibTeX)

MOJI SHI

Evaluating Dynamic Environment Difficulty for Obstacle Avoidance Benchmarking (Masters Thesis)

TU Delft Mechanical, Maritime and Materials Engineering; TU Delft Cognitive Robotics, 2023, (Alonso Mora, J. (mentor); Chen, G. (mentor); Wisse, M. (graduation committee); Hamaza, S. (graduation committee); Delft University of Technology (degree granting institution)).

(Abstract | Links | BibTeX)

Youssef Farah

EV-LayerSegNet: Self-supervised Motion Segmentation using Event-based Cameras (Masters Thesis)

TU Delft Aerospace Engineering, 2023, (de Croon, G.C.H.E. (mentor); Mooij, E. (graduation committee); Ellerbroek, Joost (graduation committee); Paredes Valles, F. (graduation committee); Delft University of Technology (degree granting institution)).

(Abstract | Links | BibTeX)

Laurens Lammers

Memory Mechanisms in Spiking Neural Networks (Masters Thesis)

TU Delft Aerospace Engineering, 2023, (Hagenaars, J.J. (mentor); de Croon, G.C.H.E. (graduation committee); Delft University of Technology (degree granting institution)).

(Abstract | Links | BibTeX)

Mauro Villanueva Aguado

An Adaptive Neural Network Quadrotor Trajectory Tracking Controller Tolerant to Propeller Damage (Masters Thesis)

TU Delft Aerospace Engineering, 2023, (de Wagter, C. (mentor); Delft University of Technology (degree granting institution)).

(Abstract | Links | BibTeX)

Jonathas Laffita van den Hove d'Ertsenryck

Rigid airborne docking between a fixed-wing UAV and an over-actuated multicopter (Masters Thesis)

TU Delft Aerospace Engineering, 2023, (Smeur, E.J.J. (mentor); Remes, B.D.W. (graduation committee); Delft University of Technology (degree granting institution)).

(Abstract | Links | BibTeX)

Erwin Lodder

Neuro-evolution learned neuromorphic control for a vision-based 3D landing (Masters Thesis)

TU Delft Aerospace Engineering, 2023, (de Croon, G.C.H.E. (mentor); Stroobants, S. (mentor); Delft University of Technology (degree granting institution)).

(Links | BibTeX)

Frédéric Larocque

Synthetic Air Data System for Pitot Tube Failure Detection on the Variable Skew Quad Plane (Masters Thesis)

TU Delft Aerospace Engineering; TU Delft Control & Simulation, 2023, (Smeur, E.J.J. (mentor); Remes, B.D.W. (graduation committee); De Ponti, T.M.L. (graduation committee); Delft University of Technology (degree granting institution)).

(Abstract | Links | BibTeX)

Marvin Cairo

Energy poverty, bridging the gap between housing association and tenant: What measures housing associations can take to aid their tenants who are struggling with energy poverty (Masters Thesis)

TU Delft Architecture and the Built Environment, 2023, (Hoekstra, J.S.C.M. (mentor); Qian, QK (mentor); Croon, T.M. (graduation committee); Delft University of Technology (degree granting institution)).

(Abstract | Links | BibTeX)

Luc Ridder

Improving DRL Of Vision-Based Navigation By Stereo Image Prediction (Masters Thesis)

TU Delft Aerospace Engineering, 2023, (de Croon, G.C.H.E. (mentor); Wu, Y. (mentor); Delft University of Technology (degree granting institution)).

(Abstract | Links | BibTeX)

Koen Engelen

Aerobatic maneuvering of Autonomous Hybrid UAVs: Trajectory Tracking using INDI in the Control Frame (Masters Thesis)

TU Delft Aerospace Engineering, 2023, (Smeur, E.J.J. (mentor); Delft University of Technology (degree granting institution)).

(Abstract | Links | BibTeX)

Tom Suys

Autonomous Control for Orographic Soaring of Fixed-Wing UAVs (Masters Thesis)

TU Delft Aerospace Engineering, 2023, (de Croon, G.C.H.E. (mentor); Remes, B.D.W. (mentor); Hwang, S. (mentor); Delft University of Technology (degree granting institution)).

(Abstract | Links | BibTeX)

Martijn Brummelhuis

A Centralised Approach to Aerial Manipulation on Overhanging Surfaces (Masters Thesis)

TU Delft Aerospace Engineering, 2023, (Hamaza, S. (mentor); Smeur, E.J.J. (graduation committee); Delft University of Technology (degree granting institution)).

(Abstract | Links | BibTeX)

Sebastien Origer

Guidance & Control Networks for Time-Optimal Quadcopter Flight (Masters Thesis)

TU Delft Aerospace Engineering, 2023, (de Wagter, C. (mentor); de Croon, G.C.H.E. (mentor); Izzo, Dario (mentor); Ferede, R. (mentor); Delft University of Technology (degree granting institution)).

(Abstract | Links | BibTeX)

Miscellaneous

Hang Yu; Guido C. H. E Croon; Christophe De Wagter

AvoidBench: A high-fidelity vision-based obstacle avoidance benchmarking suite for multi-rotors (Miscellaneous)

2023.

(Links | BibTeX)

Tim Burgers; Stein Stroobants; Guido Croon

Evolving Spiking Neural Networks to Mimic PID Control for Autonomous Blimps (Miscellaneous)

2023.

(Links | BibTeX)

Tom Suys; Sunyou Hwang; Guido C. H. E. Croon; Bart D. W. Remes

Autonomous Control for Orographic Soaring of Fixed-Wing UAVs (Miscellaneous)

2023.

(Links | BibTeX)

Dario Izzo; Emmanuel Blazquez; Robin Ferede; Sebastien Origer; Christophe De Wagter; Guido C. H. E. Croon

Optimality Principles in Spacecraft Neural Guidance and Control (Miscellaneous)

2023.

(Links | BibTeX)

Sebastien Origer; Christophe De Wagter; Robin Ferede; Guido C. H. E. Croon; Dario Izzo

Guidance & Control Networks for Time-Optimal Quadcopter Flight (Miscellaneous)

2023.

(Links | BibTeX)

Robin Ferede; Guido C. H. E. Croon; Christophe De Wagter; Dario Izzo

End-to-end Neural Network Based Quadcopter control (Miscellaneous)

2023.

(Links | BibTeX)

Stein Stroobants; Christophe De Wagter; Guido C. H. E. Croon

Neuromorphic Control using Input-Weighted Threshold Adaptation (Miscellaneous)

2023.

(Links | BibTeX)

Jason Yik; Soikat Hasan Ahmed; Zergham Ahmed; Brian Anderson; Andreas G. Andreou; Chiara Bartolozzi; Arindam Basu; Douwe Blanken; Petrut Bogdan; Sander Bohte; Younes Bouhadjar; Sonia Buckley; Gert Cauwenberghs; Federico Corradi; Guido Croon; Andreea Danielescu; Anurag Daram; Mike Davies; Yigit Demirag; Jason Eshraghian; Jeremy Forest; Steve Furber; Michael Furlong; Aditya Gilra; Giacomo Indiveri; Siddharth Joshi; Vedant Karia; Lyes Khacef; James C. Knight; Laura Kriener; Rajkumar Kubendran; Dhireesha Kudithipudi; Gregor Lenz; Rajit Manohar; Christian Mayr; Konstantinos Michmizos; Dylan Muir; Emre Neftci; Thomas Nowotny; Fabrizio Ottati; Ayca Ozcelikkale; Noah Pacik-Nelson; Priyadarshini Panda; Sun Pao-Sheng; Melika Payvand; Christian Pehle; Mihai A. Petrovici; Christoph Posch; Alpha Renner; Yulia Sandamirskaya; Clemens JS Schaefer; André Schaik; Johannes Schemmel; Catherine Schuman; Jae-sun Seo; Sadique Sheik; Sumit Bam Shrestha; Manolis Sifalakis; Amos Sironi; Kenneth Stewart; Terrence C. Stewart; Philipp Stratmann; Guangzhi Tang; Jonathan Timcheck; Marian Verhelst; Craig M. Vineyard; Bernhard Vogginger; Amirreza Yousefzadeh; Biyan Zhou; Fatima Tuz Zohora; Charlotte Frenkel; Vijay Janapa Reddi

NeuroBench: Advancing Neuromorphic Computing through Collaborative, Fair and Representative Benchmarking (Miscellaneous)

2023.

(Links | BibTeX)

Federico Paredes-Vallés; Jesse Hagenaars; Julien Dupeyroux; Stein Stroobants; Yingfu Xu; Guido Croon

Fully neuromorphic vision and control for autonomous drone flight (Miscellaneous)

2023.

(Links | BibTeX)

512 entries « 1 of 11 »