TU Berlin
Department of Computer Science

Institute for Technical Computer Science
Real Time Systems & Robotics

  Laboratory for autonomous flying robots

From autonomous flying to applications:

In our lab, we are working on different subjects connected with practical applications of autonomous aerial robots with a certain level of on-board intelligence.

The main research areas are:

• mathematical modeling of small scale aerial robots

• control of small scale aerial robots

• sensors and sensor data processing for autonomous navigation

• sensors and sensor data processing for environment perception

• collision detection/avoidance for small scale aerial robots

• control of multiple coupled helicopters

• distributed real-time systems

The main applications are:

• load transport with multiple helicopters

• deployment of sensor networks using small scale aerial robots

• monitoring and observation

More on the Laboratory for autonomous flying robots

MARVIN Mark III.

  2002-2005

The MARVIN project was part of the COMETS project which was funded by the European Community. The project's main objective was to design and implement a distributed control system for cooperative activities using heterogeneous Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs). Unmanned helicopters and airships are included. One outcome on the side of TU Berlin was the development of a completely new Marvin version.

More on Marvin Mark II

 
MARVIN Mark II. A second generation unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) in autonomous flight. 

  1997-2000

MARVIN has won the competition on June 30^th, 2000.
Again MARVIN was the only robot in the competition to fly autonomously, recognize target drums and persons and correctly transmit the positions. Press release in German.

Please visit the "Photo Gallery for the AD2000 Millennial Event at HAMMER" offered from the AUVSI.

A year before MARVIN has taken the lead of the competition on June 26^th, 1999.
MARVIN was the first and only robot in the competition which was able to fly autonomously,
recognize a target drum and correctly transmit its position. Press release in German.

More on Marvin Mark I

MARVIN Mark I. An early version shown, but already doing autonomous flight. 

Old Mark I Media

Video available

Video of MARVIN's flights during the IARC Millennial Competition, 8 minutes,
in good quality (90 MByte) (MPEG1) or in extra-low quality (12 MByte) (Windows Media)

Gallery

Images of the helicopter and uncountable outdoor trials until 2000

Attention

Public response to PDV's aerial robots

Insight

Very colorful step-by-step description of the MARVIN system that has won the IARC in 2000, by courtesy of Volker Remuß

Internal

Really very very confidential (and in German, anyway!)

 Past

  TUBROB, the blimp robot, and its participation in 1995

Dr.-Ing. habil. Konstantin Kondak

 or 

Dipl.-Ing. Volker Remuß (E-Mail)

Last update 23.10.2007 by Volker Remuß