TU Delft Swarming Lab

🆕 MSc Thesis Vacancy: Distributed Formation Control of Swarms Drones have revolutionized various aspects of human society, enhancing productivity and enabling new applications. While single-drone systems have proven useful in applications such as wildlife monitoring and city photogrammetry, the concept of drone swarms opens up even more possibilities. This thesis project focuses on a specific type of swarm known as a formation of drones, which can offer significant benefits and fulfill specific requirements for various tasks. ➡️ Objective: The objective of this thesis project is to address the challenges associated with geometrically constrained drone swarms. These challenges exist at different levels, including lower-level control of drones using consensus protocols under resource constraints, noise, and disturbances, as well as higher-level design of swarm geometry to optimize sensing and learning capabilities from a signal processing perspective. The project provides an opportunity to design, implement and validate your algorithm on a drone swarm platform in the Swarming Lab. ➡️ Requirements: We are seeking a self-motivated student with a strong background in linear algebra and statistical signal processing. An ideal candidate should also possess a keen interest and relevant experience in distributed/array signal processing or drone programming with ROS/C++. Proficiency in advanced coding skills, specifically in MATLAB or Python, is essential. Furthermore, excellent written and verbal communication skills in English are mandatory. The expected duration of the project is approximately 9-12 months. 📨 📨 📨 Please reach out if you are interested! Raj Thilak Rajan , Zhonggang Li https://lnkd.in/e9ncD9Fi [1] Li, Zhonggang, and Raj Thilak Rajan. "Geometry-Aware Distributed Kalman Filtering for Affine Formation Control under Observation Losses." In 2023 26th International Conference on Information Fusion (FUSION), pp. 1-7. IEEE, 2023. [2] Van Der Marel, Martijn, and Raj Thilak Rajan. "Distributed kalman filters for relative formation control of multi-agent systems." In 2022 30th European Signal Processing Conference (EUSIPCO), pp. 1422-1426. IEEE, 2022.

How can drone formations stay intact when their radio communication is jammed? This question has been answered by researchers around Suryansh Sharma who developed an acoustic communication framework that was validated on the Crazyflie swarm in our lab! ➡ How it works: Messages can be encoded in the motor PWM signals, resulting in subtle vibrations that can be heard by other drones in the swarm 👂. Taking inspiration from barn owl 🦉 feathers, the propeller noise can be silenced to enable communication of up to 16 drones at a time. This way, the drones can exchange emergency information and avoid crashes when radio communcation is not an option. 📄Paper: https://lnkd.in/eGzZuDX9 Check out this video for a more detailed explanation: https://lnkd.in/eFSibrYF

Swarming Lab is in the news! Last week we welcomed press into the newly opened lab, with Guido De Croon, Raj Thilak Rajan and Lennart Bult graciously presenting their work and research into robotic swarms. After several interviews and curious questions, we showcased our in-house swarm. Additionally, Servaas Clerckx, representing the Computer Vision and Geometry group at ETH Zürich, demonstrated the control of the Crazyflie 2.0 using a Microsoft Hololens. Please find the coverage of NU in the link below. Keep an eye out in Dutch media for further coverage! https://lnkd.in/eFkchJne

On the 20th of June, we officially opened the TU Delft Swarming Lab! Although we've been collaborating with students and researchers over the past year, this event marks the formal beginning of our dedicated journey into swarm robotics research. We would like to give our thanks to all attendees, speakers, and contributors who made this event a success. Special appreciation goes to Guido De Croon, Raj Thilak Rajan, Chris Verhoeven, and the team over at Emergent Swarm Solutions, as well as Daniëlle Dekker and Carma Schaap from TU Delft Science Centre - TU Delft. Without their guidance and support, this event and lab would not have been possible. If you are a student, researcher, or anyone engaged in the field of swarm robotics and are considering embarking on a new project, thesis, or research initiative, we encourage you to get in touch with us. Together, we can shape the future of swarm robotics!