Borrowed Eyes: Markerless Nano-UAV Flight with an Active Quadruped Observer
Borrowed Eyes: Markerless Nano-UAV Flight with an Active Quadruped Observer
This research introduces a vision-based system for localizing nano-UAVs using a quadruped robot with an arm-mounted camera. The quadruped tracks the drone, estimates its position using segmentation masks and depth, and transmits this data in real-time. A perception-aware NMPC dynamically adjusts the quadruped's movements to maximize drone visibility, achieving a median 3D localization error of 59 mm. The system enables complex space inspection by offloading localization tasks from the nano-UAV.
Source: arXiv Robotics — research abstracts · Read original article ↗
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Publisher-reported claims, with original evidence. These results have not been independently verified by RoboSignal.
Reported numbers
3D localization error
59
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Automatically extracted; no manual editorial approval recorded.
y control objective. Relying solely on this external estimate, the nano-UAV executed predefined trajectories from takeoff to landing with a median 3D localization error of 59 mm. The system demonstrates robustness against short visual occlusions by smoothly transitioning to onboard inertial flight when line-of-sight is temporarily lost. Ultimately, this framework allows a quadruped to offload the localization burden
Open source S4
Source：arXiv Robotics — research abstracts · arxiv.org