Pint of Robotics: My journey from single- to multi-drone systems, Dr Fabrizio Schiano, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL) 

Abstract

In this talk, I will walk you through my experiences from single- to multi-drone systems. I will start with a short introduction to the work carried out at ETHZ and Disney Research Zurich. Then, I will describe how I managed to let a group of drones localize and control themselves in an unknown environment using only camera measurements (and algebraic graph theory). Finally, I will describe my current activities at EPFL. I will describe the research carried out with the Ph.D. students I work with, which revolves around the following topics:

• vision-based aerial swarms
• aerial swarms with predictive capabilities
• personalized body machine interfaces

Finally, I will describe my research about a modular drone for transportation purposes.

Short Bio

Fabrizio received his Bachelor's and Master's degrees in Automation Engineering from the University of Napoli Federico II (Italy) in 2010 and 2013. His master thesis was carried out at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETHZ) and Disney Research Zurich (DRZ). It involved the estimation and correction of wind effects on a quadrotor UAV.

He was a research scientist between 2013 and 2014 at the Zentrum Fur Telematik (ZfT) in Wurzburg (Germany). The main project in which he was involved was about controlling a Dielectric Elastomer Generator (DEG) for energy harvesting applications. Between 2014 and 2018, he worked on his Ph.D. thesis at Inria Rennes (France) and Boston University (USA). His thesis's main goal was the autonomous navigation of a group of drones in unknown/unstructured environments by only leveraging onboard sensors (e.g., cameras, IMUs)
and local communication (e.g., WiFi).

Since 2018 he is a postdoctoral researcher and scientific collaborator at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL), where his main activities involve: research, national/international proposal writing, Ph.D./Master students supervision. The research lines he is involved with include modular aerial vehicles, aerial drone swarms, human-robot interfaces (HRIs).