Building the executive system of autonomous aerial robots using the Aerostack open-source framework

in International Journal of Advanced Robotic Systems (2020), 17(3), 1--20

A variety of open-source software tools are currently available to help building autonomous mobile robots. These tools have proven their effectiveness in developing different types of robotic systems, but ... [more ▼]

A variety of open-source software tools are currently available to help building autonomous mobile robots. These tools have proven their effectiveness in developing different types of robotic systems, but there are still needs related to safety and efficiency that are not sufficiently covered. This article describes recent advances in the Aerostack software framework to address part of these needs, which may become critical in the case of aerial robots. The article describes a software tool that helps to develop the executive system, an important component of the control architecture whose characteristics significantly affect the quality of the final autonomous robotic system. The presented tool uses an original solution for execution control that aims at simplifying mission specification and protecting against errors, considering also the efficiency needs of aerial robots. The effectiveness of the tool was evaluated by building an experimental autonomous robot. The results of the evaluation show that it provides significant benefits about usability and reliability with acceptable development effort and computational cost. The tool is based on Robot Operating System and it is publicly available as part of the last release of the Aerostack software framework (version 3.0). [less ▲]

An execution control method for the Aerostack aerial robotics framework

in Frontiers of Information Technology and Electronic Engineering (2019), 20(1), 60--75

Execution control is a critical task of robot architectures which has a deep impact on the quality of the final system. In this study, we describe a general method for execution control, which is a part ... [more ▼]

Execution control is a critical task of robot architectures which has a deep impact on the quality of the final system. In this study, we describe a general method for execution control, which is a part of the Aerostack software framework for aerial robotics, and present technical challenges for execution control and design decisions to develop the method. The proposed method has an original design combining a distributed approach for execution control of behaviors (such as situation checking and performance monitoring) and centralizes coordination to ensure consistency of the concurrent execution. We conduct experiments to evaluate the method. The experimental results show that the method is general and usable with acceptable development efforts to efficiently work on different types of aerial missions. The method is supported by standards based on a robot operating system (ROS) contributing to its general use, and an open-source project is integrated in the Aerostack framework. Therefore, its technical details are fully accessible to developers and freely available to be used in the development of new aerial robotic systems. [less ▲]

TML: a language to specify aerial robotic missions for the framework Aerostack

in International Journal of Intelligent Computing and Cybernetics (2017), 10(4), 491-512

Purpose - The main purpose of this paper is to describe the specification language TML for adaptive mission plans that we designed and implemented for the open source framework Aerostack for aerial ... [more ▼]

Purpose - The main purpose of this paper is to describe the specification language TML for adaptive mission plans that we designed and implemented for the open source framework Aerostack for aerial robotics. Approach – The TML language combines a task-based hierarchical approach together with a more flexible representation, rule-based reactive planning, to facilitate adaptability. This approach includes additional notions that abstract programming details. We built an interpreter integrated in the software framework Aerostack. The interpreter was validated with flight experiments for multi-robot missions in dynamic environments. Findings – The experiments proved that the TML language is easy to use and expressive enough to formulate adaptive missions in dynamic environments. The experiments also showed that the TML interpreter is efficient to execute multi-robot aerial missions and reusable for different platforms. The TML interpreter is able to verify the mission plan before its execution, which increases robustness and safety, avoiding the execution of certain plans that are not feasible. Originality – One of the main contributions of this work is the availability of a reliable solution to specify aerial mission plans, integrated in an active open-source project with periodic releases. To the best knowledge of the authors, there are not solutions similar to this in other active open-source projects. As additional contributions, TML uses an original combination of representations for adaptive mission plans (i.e., task trees with original abstract notions and rule-based reactive planning) together with the demonstration of its adequacy for aerial robotics. [less ▲]

Specifying complex missions for aerial robotics in dynamic environments

Scientific Conference (2016, October)

Natural user interfaces for human-drone multi-modal interaction

in 2016 International Conference on Unmanned Aircraft Systems (ICUAS) (2016, June)

A vision based aerial robot solution for the Mission 7 of the International Aerial Robotics Competition

in 2015 International Conference on Unmanned Aircraft Systems (ICUAS) (2015, June)

The International Aerial Robotics Competition (IARC) aims at pulling forward the state of the art in UAV. The Mission's 7 challenge deals mainly with GPS/Laser denied navigation, Robot-Robot interaction ... [more ▼]

The International Aerial Robotics Competition (IARC) aims at pulling forward the state of the art in UAV. The Mission's 7 challenge deals mainly with GPS/Laser denied navigation, Robot-Robot interaction and obstacle avoidance in the setting of a ground robot herding problem. We present in this paper our UAV which took part in the 2014 competition, in the China venue. This year, the mission was not completed by any participant but our team at Technical University of Madrid (UPM) were awarded with two special prizes: Best Target Detection and Best System Control. The platform, hardware and the developed software used in this top leading competition are presented in this paper. This software has three main components: the visual localization and mapping algorithm; the control algorithms; and the mission planner. A statement of the safety measures integrated in the drone and of our efforts to ensure field testing in conditions as close as possible to the challenger's are also included. [less ▲]