Vision To place UNSW at the forefront of Micro Aerial Vehicle (MAV) related research and development within Australia by attracting the active participation of the best undergraduate and postgraduate students.

What are MAVs? Micro Aerial Vehicles are small flying vehicles that typically contain sensors and computing power for remote operation. They may be used to reconnoitre disaster scenarios, monitor airborne pollutant levels or build 3D maps of the environment, among a multitude of exciting applications.

History Initiated by Dr Tomonari Furukawa in late 2006, the project developed primarily throughout 2007. It resulted in the design and construction of a team of MAVs and UGVs which participated in the MAV08 competition in March 2008 held in Agra, India. Currently, work is progressing towards the IMAV09 competition, to be held in Pensacola, Florida from 1-5 June 2009. Prospective sponsors are kindly requested to contact Dr Jayantha Katupitiya through his email address below.

IMAV09 The IMAV09 competition is comprised of both an outdoor and an indoor event, each having several independent challenges. These challenges are designed to be simple for human pilots to complete, but even so pose a technical challenge when full autonomy is required. The MAVSTAR team has entered the competition and is currently working to adjust the capabilities of their existing MAVs to enhance their prospects of success. *Update* The MAVSTAR team is packed and ready to leave for Florida. Thanks to everyone who helped with the project over the last three months. Wish us well!

Technical objectives for 2009 An MAV that is able to be teleoperated in an indoor environment; A sensor-stabilised control system that reduces the required skill level to fly; and A reliable base station that is ready for speedy deployment in a range of situations.

Achievement in MAV08 (1st US-Asian Demonstration and Assessment of Micro-Aerial and Unmanned Ground Vehicle Technology): MAVSTAR team proudly got "the best UGV performance" award in MAV08. Awards were given to only 6 international teams based on evaluated mission performance, technical paper review and static judging (see the list of meritorious teams). Additionally, our team is one of the 7 teams (out of 22 teams which submitted applications to MAV08) able to provide Micro Aerial Vehicles (MAVs), also known as Micro Air Vehicles, which could fit within a 30cm sphere and were able to fly in the MAV08 mission. In the mission, one of our custom-made UGVs defused one simulated mine and went to the middle of the testing ground, while our MAVs were launched and hovered around the base station. Difficulties include illness, interference from unknown transmitters and problems from provided power sources meant the MAVs were unable to fly far away from the base station. The outstanding performance of our UGVs which were able to support MAVs and detect mines and obstacles won the UGV award. In the static demonstration, the high lift force to size ratio, mechanical stability and low cost of our MAVs gained a lot of interest. Since the MAVs fully utilise the cross section of a 30cm sphere to generate lift force, they can generate up to 455g lift force. The top rotor features a weighted flybar that adds gyroscopic stability in roll and pitch, and the bottom rotor incorporates a precision swash‐plate for roll and pitch control. All parts, except the shaft, are fully custom-made, allowing multiple MAV production at reasonable cost. See more in our technical paper and video taken in MAV08.

MAVSTAR Take off MAVSTAR Ready for Mission UGV in Mission Best UGV Performance

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MAV Platform with Carbon Fibre Blades Contact:
For more information, please contact:
Mark Whitty or Lin Chi Mak (Team Leaders) or A/Prof. Katupitiya (Director)
Email: m.whitty@student.unsw.edu.au; j.katupitiya@unsw.edu.au
Telephone: +61-2-9385-4125 ; +61-2-9385-4096
Fax: +61-2-9663-1222
Address: School of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering,
The University of New South Wales,
NSW 2052, Australia

Organisations:
ARC Centre of Excellence for Autonomous Systems (CAS)
Computational Mechanics and Robotics (CMR) at the University of New South Wales
Australian Centre for Field Robotics (ACFR) at the University of Sydney

MAV Platform (Side View)
See more in MAVSTAR Photo Gallery

 

 

 

Sponsors for 2008:
Cooperative Research Centre for Advanced Composite Structures (CRC-ACS)
Defence Science and Technology Organisation (DSTO)

 

 

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Introduction:
The 1st US-Asian Demonstration and Assessment of Micro-Aerial and Unmanned Ground Vehicle Technology (MAV08) was held on 10 – 15th March 2008 in Agra, India near one of the Seven Wonders of the Modern World, the Taj Mahal. We constructed a team of autonomous MAVs and unmanned ground vehicles for the demonstration in MAV08. Each MAV was required to physically fit within a 30cm sphere. In the mission, the team was asked to plan a path and the correct timing for an assault from the 1 km banking complex perimeter to the designated building when the circling guard vehicle view was occluded by obstacles or buildings, and identify which room the hostages were in based on MAV reconnaissance. The detailed rules are available at the MAV08 homepage.

MAVSTAR Platform:
The MAVSTAR platform is a coaxial helicopter which fits within a 30cm sphere. The flight time and gross weight are 12-14mins and 425g respectively. A weighted flybar is attached to the top blades to stabilize the MAV. The MAV utilises the most advanced technology and materials, including custom-made carbon fibre blades and frames (probably the first coaxial helicopter within 30cm sphere which uses custom-made carbon fibre blades in the world), brushless motors and a Li-Po battery. There are several on-board sensors for semi-autonomous control, such as an ultrasonic range finder, a wireless camera, a temperature sensor and an IMU. It can send video signal to and communicate with BS over 1km (LOS). The videos (indoor and outdoor tests) show the developed MAV's ability to hover and fly stably in indoor and outdoor environments. See more in our powerpoint slides or/and technical paper from MAV08.

Indoor Localisation and Control Systems:
Localisation using blade-mounted LEDsA novel visual localisation system suitable for rotary-wing MAVs has been developed. The developed system is able to track 6 DoF motion of helicopters using only 1 off-board camera and 3 on-board LEDs. A control system using the localisation system for a RC coaxial helicopter has been developed. In the current control system, the helicopter can hover around a point with 0.2 m (RMS) 3D positioning error. See more here.

Acoustic Non-Line-of-Sight (NLoS) Localisation:
Existing indoor localisation systems for MAVs are inaccurate under Non-Line-of-Sight (NLoS) conditions. This project proposes an acoustic localisation technique which can estimate the position of an MAV precisely even under NLoS conditions without any infrastructure. Having multiple directional microphones on Unmanned Ground Vehicles (UGVs) carrying self-localisation and mapping sensors and a wireless microphone on a MAV, the sound generated by the MAV while in motion is localised by the UGVs using the Time-of-Arrivals (ToAs) of the received acoustic signals. Under NLoS conditions, there is always a positively biased error, referred to as a NLoS error, in a measured ToA, which is predicted and corrected by the use of a map of the environment generated by the mapping sensors on the UGVs.

The system was tested under both quiet and noisy environments. With 60.1 and 75.8 dB background noise, the positioning error of the developed system ranges from 0.07 to 0.37 m respectively, which is at least twice as accurate than other techniques, showing the superiority of the proposed technique in different conditions. In conclusion, an acoustic localisation system for an MAV using multiple UGVs has been tested and developed. Using the novel NLoS error estimator to correct the NLoS error in the measured TDoA, the performance of the system is robust to the existence of obstacles blocking the LoS paths between the MAV and UGVs. See more in our poster. Poster for Acoustic NLoS Localisation

Videos:

1. (Oldest) 3D Position and Yaw Control of a MAV- Play Video, Save Video, YouTube
2. Autonomous MAV for USAR - Play Video, Save Video
3. Bayes Search using UGV- Play Video, Save Video
4. Indoor Flight Test for Final Version- Play Video, Save Video, YouTube
5. Outdoor Flight Test for Final Version- Play Video, Save Video, YouTube
6. MAV flying with camera in field trip- Play Video, Save Video, YouTube
7. MAVSTAR in MAV08- Play/Save Video, YouTube
8. MAV08static Display UNSW (Uploaded by MAV08 organiser)- YouTube
9. MAV08-global video-UNSW (Uploaded by MAV08 organiser)- YouTube
10. MAV08-final fly-UNSW (Uploaded by MAV08 organiser)- YouTube
11. MAV08-conference-UNSW (Uploaded by MAV08 organiser)- YouTube
12. MAVSTAR with a large landing gear- Play/Save Video, YouTube
13. (Latest) Tuning height controller- Play/Save Video, YouTube

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Award:

• "The Best UGV performance" in MAV08, 10-15th March 2008.

Publications:

1. Lin Chi Mak, Makoto Kumon, Mark Whitty, Jayantha Katupitiya and Tomonari Furukawa, "Design and development of the Micro Aerial Vehicles and their Cooperative Systems for Target Search and Tracking", International Journal of Micro Air Vehicles (IJMAV), Multi-Science, UK, 22 pages, accepted Apr. 2009.
2. Lin Chi Mak, Makoto Kumon, Mark Whitty, Moises Nicoletti, Hang Xu, Kai Zhan, Gabriel Kalkbrenner, Guillermo Caceres Abril, Daniel Atkins, Christopher Chare, Bryan Clarke, Arjun Khurmi, Anselm Ma, Farhan Qureshi, John Paul Zambrano, Ankit Upadhyay, Philip Sammons, Alfred Win Lin Hu and Tomonari Furukawa, "Design and development of the Micro Aerial Vehicles for Search, Tracking And Reconnaissance (MAVSTAR) for MAV08", 1st US‐Asian demonstration and assessment of micro‐aerial and unmanned ground vehicle technology (MAV08), Agra, India, Mar. 10-15, 2008, 20 pages.
3. Lin Chi Mak, Mark Whitty and Tomonari Furukawa, "A localisation system for an indoor rotary-wing MAV using blade mounted LEDs", Sensor Review, Emerald, Vol. 28, Issue 2, pp. 125-131, 2008.
4. Lin Chi Mak and Tomonari Furukawa, "A 6 DoF Visual Tracking System for a Miniature Helicopter", 2nd International Conference on Sensing Technology (ICST ‘07), Palmerston North, New Zealand, Nov. 26-28, 2007, 6 pages.

Commentaries and other documentation:

1. Newspaper: "Airborne crop watch on the horizon", Ground Cover, Issue 77, Nov-Dec 2008.
2. Magazine: "Flight of the MAV", Research@UNSW 08.09, pp. 20, UNSW, 2008.
3. Magazine: "Micro-flight team hits new heights", Uniken, Issue 48, pp. 12, Media & Communication Office, UNSW, Sept./Oct., 2008.
4. UNSW.TV: "Click and Connect", Media & Communication Office, UNSW, Feb. 25, 2008.
5. TV program: "The Future of Flight", Catalyst, ABC Television, Sept. 13, 2007.
6. CAS report: "ARC Centre of Excellence for Autonomous Systems Annual Report 2007", ARC Centre of Excellence for Autonomous Systems, Dec., 2007.

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Team Structure

Directors:

• A/Prof. Jayantha Katupitiya
• Dr. Jose Guivant
• Dr. Ray Eaton

Supervisor:

• A/Prof. Tomonari Furukawa

Leaders:

• Lin Chi Mak (Autonomy team)
• Mark Whitty (Testing team)

Members:
Autonomy team

• Christopher Chare, Farhan Qureshi, Ronald Choi, Michael Woods, Derek Taprell

Testing team

• Steven Lee, Warren Jones, Harry Xiao, Anselm Ma, Charoline Ng, Karthik Sukumar, Wei Hua Chen, Darko Petrovic, Shawn Goh, Nicholas Robinson

Technical advisors:

• Daniel Watman

Professional officer:

• Alfred Hu

Alumni:

• A/Prof Makoto Kumon, Kai Zhan, Guillermo Caceres Abril, Daniel Atkins, Bryan Clarke, Arjun Khurmi, Alexis Nicoletti, Ankit Upadhyay, Hang Xu, John Paul Zambrano, Philip Sammons, Gabriel Kalkbrenner (Pro pilot)

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Link to old MAVSTAR team (2007-08)