Autonomous Flying Vehicle Research at the University of Southern California

This paper outlines research on Autonomous Flying Vehicles at the University of Southern California (USC). We are particularly interested in control strategies for autonomous vehicles to perform difficult tasks such as autonomous landing and trajectory following. In addition we are starting research on cooperative algorithms for formation flight with a group of autonomous flying robots. In particular, we present the design and behavior-based control architecture for an autonomous flying vehicle (AFV), for vision-based landing. We use vision for precise target detection and recognition as well as combination of vision and GPS for navigation. An outline of the reference design of an autonomous helicopter for research in formation flying is also presented. A discussion of exemplar algorithms used for controlling multiple robots in formation is presented.