Case File2012
UAV-UGV Hybrid with Air-Based Path Planning
NYU Abu Dhabi · Interactive Robots and Media Lab (IRML)
Challenge, contribution, and outcome
CHALLENGE
Ground robots need overhead situational awareness for path planning, but a single platform cannot carry both mobility and long-range vision affordably.
MY CONTRIBUTION
First-author development of the UAV–UGV hybrid pilot: aerial mapping into ground-robot path planning, published at FIT 2012.
OUTCOME
First-author FIT 2012 paper on a symbiotic UAV–UGV pair that maps from the air and plans ground routes from stitched aerial frames.
Narrative
Heterogeneous symbiotic robot pair treated as one entity with separable bodies: the ground vehicle carries and recharges a lightweight quad-rotor, while the quad-rotor acts as the pair's detachable long-range vision system, turning top-down aerial views into the maps that plan the ground vehicle's route.
System Record
- Application
- Laboratory
- Outcomes
- OUTCOMEPeer-Reviewed Publication
- Period
- 2012
Development & Validation
- Aerial frames are stitched into a single overhead map, obstacles are segmented from it, and a slowness map yields a collision-free minimum-time trajectory for the ground robot.
- Built as a small-scale indoor pilot standing in for a much larger outdoor system, which made the concept testable and iterable at low cost and risk.
- First-author paper at the 10th International Conference on Frontiers of Information Technology; still cited in later aerial terrain mapping work for ground robot navigation.
Credits & Collaborators
Nikolaos Giakoumidis
Interactive Robots and Media Lab (IRML)
Lead author
Nikolaos Mavridis
Interactive Robots and Media Lab (IRML)
Principal Investigator
Jong Hyun Bak
IRML
Co-author
Juan V. Gómez
IRML
Co-author
A. Llenga
IRML
Co-author
Evidence
Related
Publications
- Pilot-scale development of a UAV-UGV hybrid with air-based UGV path planning
2012 10th International Conference on Frontiers of Information Technology, 204–208 · 2012