While the word “drone” often comes with a negative connotation due to the military’s use of this technology for surveillance, Michigan Tech students and faculty are working to change that view. The Intelligent Robotics Laboratory (IRL) housed in the EERC and the Michigan Tech Research Institute in Ann Arbor are working together with the Michigan Department of Transportation (MDOT) to create a system of drones, or Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), that will aid in transportation maintenance.
Director of the IRL, Dr. Timothy Havens, explains the premise of the project in greater detail.
“We are currently funded by Michigan Department of Transportation to investigate the role that unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) can play in infrastructure inspection, including bridge and culvert inspection and traffic monitoring,” Havens said. “The project personnel consists of scientists from both the Michigan Tech Research Institute in Ann Arbor and the main Michigan Tech campus in Houghton.”
Third-year electrical and computer engineering student Josh Manela is one of the students working under Havens here at Tech.
“My project that I’m working on right now is looking at different types of small onboard computers and microcontrollers such as Arduinos or Raspberry Pis,” Manela said.
The UAVs map the environment they fly over in a few different ways, using both regular cameras and a laser radar system.
“My lab, the Intelligent Robotics Lab, is developing a sensor-fused system that uses LIDAR (laser radar), video cameras and inertial sensors that are able to collect three-dimensional image information about a scene and the accompanying software algorithms that process the data into an accurate and usable form,” Havens said. “Our goal is to create a system that is able to do three-dimensional simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM), which is one of the fundamental robotics challenges.”
The team faces many challenges due to the newness of the technology.
“A lot of work has been done with terrestrial robots in two-dimensions, but flying robots in three-dimensions is a whole new can of worms,” Havens said.
In addition to the MDOT project, Havens’ lab team is working on another UAV project that will further their capabilities in the air.
“The Intelligent Robotics Lab also has a project funded by an MTU Research Excellence Fund Award that is looking at how groups of UAVs tied together with internet cloud computing can cooperate to achieve goals,” Havens said. “The projects are really interesting and we are having a lot of fun.”