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Software4Robots

Fast facts

Organizational unit
- Faculty of Information Technology
- IDiAL
Duration
03/2021

About the project

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Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF)

Project type	public funding (BMBF, University of Applied Sciences Young Engineers)
Duration	4 years

Complex robotics software in civilian safety

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) are making their way from toy drones further into professional applications. The advantages for fire fighting and prevention and the observation of critical infrastructure by fire and support organizations have been recognized. UAVs have reached a level of technical maturity that enables a prompt market entrance.

In Europe, however, they are not yet permitted in the civilian domain as the systems need to comply with civil aviation rules. Solutions are urgently needed as, so far, Chinese and American manufacturers dominate the market.

An important enabler for the European UAV market are low-priced development tools and software systems that can be used by SME, especially as open-source. For this purpose, Software4Robots will conceive and develop modular, open software architectures and tools.

The project is carried out within three doctoral projects with the CITEC/Bielefeld University, FernUniversität in Hagen and the Technical University of Munich. The doctoral theses deals with the visual capture of environmental and odometry data from autonomous UAV, navigation and mission control procedures for UAV swarms and the adaptive control of oleo-pneumatic flight landing gear for small aircraft. The partner Institute for Fire and Rescue Technology provides the link to civilian safety research. The partner Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in California gives international access to space research. Validation and testing will be done by the partner smart mechatronics GmbH.

In addition to doctoral theses, Master's and Bachelor's theses are also planned. In summer schools and seminar papers, students and Master's courses will work on scenarios and test and evaluate the tools. Based on the work, publications will be produced (especially with the JPL). Qualified Master's students have the opportunity to complete their theses directly at the JPL and receive travel grants.

The project expands the competency of the IDiAL Institute in open-source tools and software architecture. The results will be published as open-source software (via Eclipse). This will give SME access to the fast growing market for complex UAV software, and enable the competitiveness of German and European industry.