In January and June 2021, AURORA’s partner UNIFI published two articles about their research on unmanned autonomous vehicles (UAV).
“Development of Non Expensive Technologies for Precise Maneuvering of Completely Autonomous Unmanned Aerial Vehicles”, published in January 2021, proposes solutions for flying small UAVs using low-cost equipment and technologies. Project partners performed prototype tests to verify the navigational accuracy of the proposed solutions, concluding that UAVs using such inexpensive technologies come very close to precisely following the desired trajectory.
Published in June 2021, “A Multilevel Architecture for Autonomous UAVs” describes an approach for an on-board computer, or “cyber pilot”, which can potentially replace the role of a human operator and simplify complex tasks generally related to autonomous flight operations. Tests were performed to validate how precisely the UAV could detect obstacles and follow a defined flight path without ground assistance. The UAVs were able to quite precisely follow the desired trajectory.