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Ardea

Ardea is a Micro Aerial Vehicle (MAV) that has been developed from the ground up at the German Aerospace Center's Institute of Robotics and Mechatronics. Two major research directions for MAVs are autonomous exploration of unknown environments and cooperation with emergency teams in disaster situations.

Ardea was first presented to the public in 2016.

Technical Data

Footprint: 68cm × 68cm × 30cm
Weight: 2.4kg
Flight time: approx. 10 minutes
Power supply: 4S (14.8V) LiPo battery 7000mAh
On-board sensors: • 4x VRmS-16/C-COB (1280 × 960px)
• IMU
Capabilities: • FPGA-based Stereo-Vision @10Hz (SGM)
• Relative wind estimation using dynamic model
• Contact force estimation using dynamic model
• Depth maps with 240° × 80° field of view
• Autonomous mapping and navigation in unknown, GPS-denied environments

System description

Especially desirable is the development of systems which can operate in diverse environments, for example in collapsed buildings or on alien planets, where GPS positioning is not available and self-contained localization, navigation and mapping using on-board sensors is crucial. Ardea is well suited to operating in such foreign environments and difficult terrain. An important research goal for Ardea is cooperative action with the LRU as a heterogeneous robot team where the various skills of each robot can be leveraged to achieve common goals more efficiently. Continuing development of Ardea is vital to well-rounded research of useful and autonomous systems — to that end our in-house engineering allows direct access to all critical on-board hardware, such as the motor currents, which are used to estimate relative wind speeds and other external forces.

Ardea has four Ultra-wide Angle Lens cameras which enable 240° view in the vertical direction. Thus Ardea has simultaneous coverage of the ground and directly above, facilitating navigation and mapping in narrow spaces such as caves. Additionally Ardea's FPGA runs Semi-Global-Matching (SGM) stereo image processing of the four cameras to produce depth maps which enable it to perceive the three dimensional world.

Ardea – image gallery

Ardea estimating wind velocities in wind tunnel

In order to validate the developed wind estimation method, Ardea was flown in different wind conditions in a 3D wind tunnel (WindEEE in Canada). 

Credit: DLR (CC-BY 3.0).

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Ardea estimating wind velocities in wind tunnel

Ardea and LRU heterogeneous robot team

The heterogeneous robot team, consisting of the rover LRU and multicopter Ardea, is used to autonomously explore unknown environments. As a ground-based vehicle, the rovers' locomotion is energy-efficient and with its landing platform it serves as a mobile base to the multicopter. Due to the compact size and the ability to fly the multicopter is used in difficult terrain and even caves. Both robots have the same capability to use their optical and inertial sensors to simultaneously sense the 3D environment to avoid collisions and to create 3D Maps. Furthermore, resulting 3D maps can be exchanged between the robots and merged together. 

Credit: DLR (CC-BY 3.0).

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Ardea and LRU heterogeneous robot team

Ardea on Mount Etna

Ardea on Mount Etna during the ROBEX test campaign in 2017 

Credit: DLR (CC-BY 3.0).

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Ardea on Mount Etna

Micro Aerial Vehicle (MAV) Ardea

Micro Aerial Vehicle (MAV) Ardea (2016) 

Credit: DLR (CC-BY 3.0).

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Multicopter Ardea

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Selected Publications

Teo Tomić, Korbinian Schmid, Philipp Lutz, Andrew Mathers, Sami Haddadin: "The flying anemometer: Unified estimation of wind velocity from aerodynamic power and wrenches" in Proc. of the 2016 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), Daejeon, Korea, 9–14 October 2016.

Marcus Gerhard Müller, Florian Steidle, Martin Schuster, Philipp Lutz, Moritz Maier, Samantha Stoneman, Teodor Tomic, Wolfgang Stürzl: "Robust Visual-Inertial State Estimation with Multiple Odometries and Efficient Mapping on an MAV with Ultra-Wide FOV Stereo Vision" in Proc. of the IEEE International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), Madrid, Spain, 1–5 October 2018.

Contact
Marcus Gerhard Müller
German Aerospace Center

Institute of Robotics and Mechatronics
, Perception and Cognition
Oberpfaffenhofen-Weßling

Tel.: +49 8153 28-3097

Fax: +49 8153 28-1134

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