First place for the MAVLab

News - 13 December 2018

A team of TU Delft and ENAC researchers has won first prize at the International Micro Air Vehicle conference held in Melbourne, Australia.

A joint team of TU Delft’s MAVLab and ENAC was the most successful at mapping a simulated disaster area and sending in a small drone to find a victim located in a forest.

The International Micro Air Vehicle (IMAV) event is the main international event in the domain small drones. It combines a scientific conference with the application of beyond state-of-the-art technologies in both indoor and outdoor competitions. This year’s outdoor competition featured a search-and-rescue scenario, in which drones had to autonomously map an area, and even fly into a forest in order to look for a “wounded fireman”.

For tackling this mission TU Delft’s MAVLab teamed up together with the ENAC drone lab from Toulouse, France. Together, these labs are main contributors to the open source drone autopilot project Paparazzi, which allowed smooth collaboration and integration of the code. Specifically, ENAC focused on quickly mapping the search area with a small 300-gram fixed wing drone, while TU Delft flew a small quadrotor drone into the forest to look for the fireman.

Further, the MAVLab won the prize for the Most Innovative Design in the indoor competition, in which drones had to fly through windows, gates, and follow a predetermined flight path. The prize was awarded for the demonstration of a fully autonomous version of the DelFly Nimble, a tailless flapping wing drone. In order to fly by itself, the DelFly Nimble was equipped with a single, small camera and a small processor allowing onboard vision processing and control. The jury of international experts in the field praised the agility and autonomous flight capabilities of the DelFly Nimble.

The technology used at the competition has been developed by TU Delft as part of the SESAR JU-funded U-space PercEvite project, which aims to provide even small commercial drones with sense-and-avoid capabilities. This will help with safe integration of drones in our environment.