Drone Lab

Drones are becoming increasingly important professional as well as scientific tools. In order to stay competitive in such a fast-paced environment and to lead cutting-edge research, a drone-lab has been established at the university as a joint endeavour of Prof. Hartanto (Robotics) and Prof. Becker (Sensors). It allows rapid prototyping as well as the testing and deploying of new technologies. Physical interactions with drones, precise indoor and outdoor positioning, sophisticated sensor fusion for remote sensing and autonomous navigation (simultaneous localization and mapping, SLAM) are some of the core research areas of the lab.

One of the main facilities of the lab is the safety cage, where various technologies are evaluated on smaller drones before being deployed on larger ones. This is also where various technologies for the precise positioning of drones are tested before field trials. Numerous high-risk environments can be simulated in a controlled setting.