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, 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

679 entries « 4 of 14 »

2022

Masters Theses

Pietro Campolucci

Model and Actuator Based Trajectory Tracking for Incremental Nonlinear Dynamic Inversion Controllers (Masters Thesis)

TU Delft Aerospace Engineering, 2022, (Smeur, E.J.J. (mentor); Mancinelli, A. (mentor); Delft University of Technology (degree granting institution)).

(Abstract | Links | BibTeX)

Alejandro Barberia Chueca

Onboard Drone Detection with Event Cameras (Masters Thesis)

TU Delft Aerospace Engineering, 2022, (Dupeyroux, J.J.G. (mentor); de Croon, G.C.H.E. (graduation committee); Delft University of Technology (degree granting institution)).

(Abstract | Links | BibTeX)

Yvonne Eggers

Intrinsic Plasticity for Robust Event-Based Optic Flow Estimation (Masters Thesis)

TU Delft Aerospace Engineering, 2022, (de Croon, G.C.H.E. (mentor); Dupeyroux, J.J.G. (mentor); Delft University of Technology (degree granting institution)).

(Abstract | Links | BibTeX)

Robin Ferede

An Adaptive Control Strategy for Neural Network based Optimal Quadcopter Controllers (Masters Thesis)

TU Delft Aerospace Engineering, 2022, (de Wagter, C. (mentor); de Croon, G.C.H.E. (mentor); Izzo, Dario (mentor); Delft University of Technology (degree granting institution)).

(Abstract | Links | BibTeX)

Jan Verheyen

Insect-Inspired Visual Guidance: are current familiarity-based models ready for long-ranged navigation? (Masters Thesis)

TU Delft Aerospace Engineering, 2022, (de Croon, G.C.H.E. (mentor); Dupeyroux, J.J.G. (graduation committee); Delft University of Technology (degree granting institution)).

(Abstract | Links | BibTeX)

Erik Oever

An artificial neural network based method for grid-free acoustic source localization using multiple input frequencies (Masters Thesis)

TU Delft Aerospace Engineering, 2022, (de Croon, G.C.H.E. (mentor); Delft University of Technology (degree granting institution)).

(Abstract | Links | BibTeX)

Shawn Schröter

We fly as one: Design and Joint Control of a Conjoined Biplane and Quadrotor (Masters Thesis)

TU Delft Aerospace Engineering, 2022, (Smeur, E.J.J. (mentor); Remes, B.D.W. (graduation committee); Delft University of Technology (degree granting institution)).

(Abstract | Links | BibTeX)

Jingyi LU

Evolving-to-Learn with Spiking Neural Networks (Masters Thesis)

TU Delft Aerospace Engineering, 2022, (de Croon, G.C.H.E. (mentor); Hagenaars, J.J. (graduation committee); Delft University of Technology (degree granting institution)).

(Abstract | Links | BibTeX)

Tommy Tran

Semantic Segmentation using Deep Neural Networks for MAVs (Masters Thesis)

TU Delft Aerospace Engineering, 2022, (de Croon, G.C.H.E. (mentor); Xu, Y. (mentor); de Wagter, C. (graduation committee); van Gemert, J.C. (graduation committee); Delft University of Technology (degree granting institution)).

(Abstract | Links | BibTeX)

Chris Groen

Grammatical Evolution for Optimising Drone Behaviors (Masters Thesis)

TU Delft Aerospace Engineering, 2022, (Li, S. (mentor); de Croon, G.C.H.E. (mentor); Delft University of Technology (degree granting institution)).

(Abstract | Links | BibTeX)

Roelof Stikker

Self-supervised finetuning of stereo matching algorithms (Masters Thesis)

TU Delft Aerospace Engineering, 2022, (de Croon, G.C.H.E. (mentor); Pfeiffer, S.U. (graduation committee); Delft University of Technology (degree granting institution)).

(Abstract | Links | BibTeX)

Miscellaneous

Julius Rückin; Liren Jin; Federico Magistri; Cyrill Stachniss; Marija Popović

Informative Path Planning for Active Learning in Aerial Semantic Mapping (Miscellaneous)

2022.

(Links | BibTeX)

Felix Stache; Jonas Westheider; Federico Magistri; Cyrill Stachniss; Marija Popović

Adaptive Path Planning for UAVs for Multi-Resolution Semantic Segmentation (Miscellaneous)

2022.

(Links | BibTeX)

Yilun Wu; Federico Paredes-Vallés; Guido C. H. E. Croon

Rethinking Event-based Optical Flow: Iterative Deblurring as an Alternative to Correlation Volumes (Miscellaneous)

2022.

(Links | BibTeX)

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

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

2022.

(Links | BibTeX)

Yingfu Xu; Guido C. H. E. Croon

CUAHN-VIO: Content-and-Uncertainty-Aware Homography Network for Visual-Inertial Odometry (Miscellaneous)

2022.

(Links | BibTeX)

Sabrina M. Neuman; Brian Plancher; Bardienus P. Duisterhof; Srivatsan Krishnan; Colby Banbury; Mark Mazumder; Shvetank Prakash; Jason Jabbour; Aleksandra Faust; Guido C. H. E. Croon; Vijay Janapa Reddi

Tiny Robot Learning: Challenges and Directions for Machine Learning in Resource-Constrained Robots (Miscellaneous)

2022.

(Links | BibTeX)

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

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

2022.

(Links | BibTeX)

Diana A. Olejnik; Sunyi Wang; Julien Dupeyroux; Stein Stroobants; Matěj Karásek; Christophe De Wagter; Guido Croon

An Experimental Study of Wind Resistance and Power Consumption in MAVs with a Low-Speed Multi-Fan Wind System (Miscellaneous)

2022.

(Links | BibTeX)

Tommy Tran; Yingfu Xu; Guido Croon

Data underlying the publication: "Semantic Segmentation over Time using Deep Neural Networks" (Miscellaneous)

2022.

(Links | BibTeX)

Sven Pfeiffer; Shushuai Li; Guido Croon

Flight data underlying the publication: "Three-dimensional Relative Localization and Synchronized Movement with Wireless Ranging" (Miscellaneous)

2022.

(Links | BibTeX)

Yifu Tao; Marija Popović; Yiduo Wang; Sundara Tejaswi Digumarti; Nived Chebrolu; Maurice Fallon

3D Lidar Reconstruction with Probabilistic Depth Completion for Robotic Navigation (Miscellaneous)

2022.

(Links | BibTeX)

PhD Theses

C. Wagter

Hover and fast flight of minimum-mass mission-capable flying robots (PhD Thesis)

Delft University of Technology, 2022, ISBN: 978-94-6384-333-1.

(Links | BibTeX)

2021

Journal Articles

D. Wijnker, T. van Dijk, G.C.H.E. de Croon, C. De Wagter

Hear-and-avoid for unmanned air vehicles using convolutional neural networks (Journal Article)

In: International Journal of Micro Air Vehicles, vol. 13, pp. 1-15, 2021.

(Abstract | Links | BibTeX)

G.C.H.E. de Croon, C. De Wagter, T. Seidl

Enhancing optical-flow-based control by learning visual appearance cues for flying robots (Journal Article)

In: Nature Machine Intelligence, vol. 3, no. 1, 2021.

(Abstract | Links | BibTeX)

D. C. Wijnker; Tom Dijk; M. Snellen; G. C. H. E. Croon; C. Wagter

Hear-and-avoid for unmanned air vehicles using convolutional neural networks (Journal Article)

In: International Journal of Micro Air Vehicles, vol. 13, 2021, ISSN: 1756-8293.

(Links | BibTeX)

G. C. H. E. Croon; C. Wagter; T. Seidl

Enhancing optical-flow-based control by learning visual appearance cues for flying robots (Journal Article)

In: Nature Machine Intelligence, vol. 3, no. 1, pp. 33–41, 2021, ISSN: 2522-5839.

(Links | BibTeX)

Patricia P. Parlevliet; Andrey Kanaev; Chou P. Hung; Andreas Schweiger; Frederick D. Gregory; Ryad Benosman; Guido C. H. E. Croon; Yoram Gutfreund; Chung Chuan Lo; Cynthia F. Moss

Autonomous Flying With Neuromorphic Sensing (Journal Article)

In: Frontiers in Neuroscience, vol. 15, 2021, ISSN: 1662-4548.

(Links | BibTeX)

Pulkit Goyal; Antoine Cribellier; Guido C. H. E. Croon; Martin J. Lankheet; Johan L. Leeuwen; Remco P. M. Pieters; Florian T. Muijres

Bumblebees land rapidly and robustly using a sophisticated modular flight control strategy (Journal Article)

In: iScience, vol. 24, no. 5, 2021, ISSN: 2589-0042.

(Links | BibTeX)

C. De Wagter; B. Remes; E. Smeur; F. Tienen; R. Ruijsink; K. Hecke; E. Horst

The NederDrone: A hybrid lift, hybrid energy hydrogen UAV (Journal Article)

In: International Journal of Hydrogen Energy, vol. 46, no. 29, pp. 16003–16018, 2021, ISSN: 0360-3199.

(Links | BibTeX)

Christophe De Wagter; Federico Paredes-Vallés; Nilay Sheth; Guido Croon

The Artificial Intelligence behind the winning entry to the 2019 AI Robotic Racing Competition (Journal Article)

In: 2021.

(Links | BibTeX)

Chris P. L. Jong; Bart D. W. Remes; Sunyou Hwang; Christophe De Wagter

Never landing drone: Autonomous soaring of a unmanned aerial vehicle in front of a moving obstacle (Journal Article)

In: International Journal of Micro Air Vehicles, vol. 13, 2021, ISSN: 1756-8293.

(Links | BibTeX)

Poramate Manoonpong; Luca Patanè; Xiaofeng Xiong; Ilya Brodoline; Julien Dupeyroux; Stéphane Viollet; Paolo Arena; Julien R. Serres

Insect-inspired robots: Bridging biological and artificial systems (Journal Article)

In: Sensors, vol. 21, no. 22, 2021, ISSN: 1424-8220.

(Links | BibTeX)

C. De Wagter; F. Paredes-Vallés; N. Sheth; G. Croon

Learning fast in autonomous drone racing (Journal Article)

In: Nature Machine Intelligence, vol. 3, no. 10, pp. 923, 2021, ISSN: 2522-5839, (Copyright: Copyright 2021 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.).

(Links | BibTeX)

Raoul Dinaux; Nikhil Wessendorp; Julien Dupeyroux; Guido C. H. E. De Croon

FAITH: Fast Iterative Half-Plane Focus of Expansion Estimation Using Optic Flow (Journal Article)

In: IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters, vol. 6, no. 4, pp. 7627–7634, 2021, ISSN: 2377-3766.

(Links | BibTeX)

Sven Pfeiffer; Christophe De Wagter; Guido C. H. E. De Croon

A Computationally Efficient Moving Horizon Estimator for Ultra-Wideband Localization on Small Quadrotors (Journal Article)

In: IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters, vol. 6, no. 4, pp. 6725–6732, 2021, ISSN: 2377-3766, (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)

Ye Zhou; Hann Woei Ho; Qiping Chu

Extended incremental nonlinear dynamic inversion for optical flow control of micro air vehicles (Journal Article)

In: Aerospace Science and Technology, vol. 116, 2021, ISSN: 1270-9638.

(Links | BibTeX)

Seng Man Wong; Hann Woei Ho; Mohd Zulkifly Abdullah

Design and Fabrication of a Dual Rotor-Embedded Wing Vertical Take-Off and Landing Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (Journal Article)

In: Unmanned Systems, vol. 9, no. 1, pp. 45–63, 2021, ISSN: 2301-3850.

(Links | BibTeX)

H. Y. Lee; H. W. Ho; Y. Zhou

Deep Learning-based Monocular Obstacle Avoidance for Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Navigation in Tree Plantations: Faster Region-based Convolutional Neural Network Approach (Journal Article)

In: Journal of Intelligent and Robotic Systems: Theory and Applications, vol. 101, no. 1, 2021, ISSN: 0921-0296.

(Links | BibTeX)

data

Sven Pfeiffer; Christophe Wagter; Guido Croon

Data underlying the publication: "A Computationally Efficient Moving Horizon Estimator for UWB Localization on Small Quadrotors"" (data)

2021.

(Links | BibTeX)

Christophe De Wagter; Federico Paredes-Vallés; Nilay Sheth; Guido C. H. E. De Croon

Logfiles of the Artificial Intelligence behind the winning entry to the 2019 AI Robotic Racing Competition (data)

2021.

(Links | BibTeX)

Benjamin Keltjens; Tom Van Dijk; Guido De Croon

Self-Supervised Monocular Depth Estimation of Untextured Indoor Rotated Scenes (data)

2021.

(Links | BibTeX)

Guido De Croon; Christophe De Wagter; Tobias Seidl

Replication Data for: "Enhancing optical flow-based control by learning visual appearance cues for flying robots" (data)

2021.

(Links | BibTeX)

Proceedings Articles

M. Gossye; S. Hwang; B. D. W. Remes

Developing a modular tool to simulate regeneration power potential using orographic wind-hovering uavs (Proceedings Article)

In: Martinez-Carranza, Jose (Ed.): Proceedings of the 12th International Micro Air Vehicle Conference, pp. 116–123, 2021, (12th International Micro Air Vehicle Conference, IMAV 2021 ; Conference date: 17-11-2021 Through 19-11-2021).

(Links | BibTeX)

G. Gonzalez Archundia; G. C. H. E. Croon; D. A. Olejnik; M. Karasek

Position controller for a flapping wing drone using uwb (Proceedings Article)

In: Martinez-Carranza, Jose (Ed.): Proceedings of the 12th International Micro Air Vehicle Conference, pp. 85–92, 2021, (12th International Micro Air Vehicle Conference, IMAV 2021 ; Conference date: 17-11-2021 Through 19-11-2021).

(Links | BibTeX)

E. D. Vroon; Jim Rojer; G. C. H. E. Croon

Motion-based mav detection in gps-denied environments (Proceedings Article)

In: Martinez-Carranza, Jose (Ed.): Proceedings of the 12th International Micro Air Vehicle Conference, pp. 42–49, 2021, (12th International Micro Air Vehicle Conference, IMAV 2021 ; Conference date: 17-11-2021 Through 19-11-2021).

(Links | BibTeX)

D. C. Wijngaarden; E. J. J. Smeur; B. D. W. Remes

Flight code convergence: fixedwing, rotorcraft, hybrid (Proceedings Article)

In: 12th International Micro Air Vehicle Conference, pp. 21–27, 2021, (12th International Micro Air Vehicle Conference, IMAV 2021 ; Conference date: 17-11-2021 Through 19-11-2021).

(Links | BibTeX)

L. F. A. Dellemann; C. Wagter

Hybrid UAV Attitude Control using INDI and Dynamic Tilt-Twist (Proceedings Article)

In: Martinez-Carranza, Jose (Ed.): Proceedings of the 12th International Micro Air Vehicle Conference, pp. 131–136, 2021, (12th International Micro Air Vehicle Conference, IMAV 2021 ; Conference date: 17-11-2021 Through 19-11-2021).

(Links | BibTeX)

J. M. Westenberger; C. Wagter; G. C. H. E. Croon

Onboard Time-Optimal Control for Tiny Quadcopters (Proceedings Article)

In: Martinez-Carranza, Jose (Ed.): Proceedings of the 12th International Micro Air Vehicle Conference, pp. 93–100, 2021, (12th International Micro Air Vehicle Conference, IMAV 2021 ; Conference date: 17-11-2021 Through 19-11-2021).

(Links | BibTeX)

H. J. Karssies; C. Wagter

XINCA: Extended Incremental Non-linear Control Allocation on the TU Delft Quadplane (Proceedings Article)

In: Martinez-Carranza, Jose (Ed.): Proceedings of the 12th International Micro Air Vehicle Conference, pp. 74–84, 2021, (12th International Micro Air Vehicle Conference, IMAV 2021 ; Conference date: 17-11-2021 Through 19-11-2021).

(Links | BibTeX)

679 entries « 4 of 14 »