Autonomous quadrotors will soon play a major role in search-and-rescue and remote-inspection missions, where a fast response is crucial. Quadrotors have the potential to navigate quickly through unstructured environments, enter and exit buildings through narrow gaps, and fly through collapsed buildings. However, their speed and maneuverability are still far from those of birds. Indeed, agile navigation through unknown, indoor environments poses a number of challenges for robotics research in terms of perception, state estimation, planning, and control. In this talk, I will show that active vision is crucial to plan trajectories that improve the quality of perception. Also, I will talk about our recent results on event-based vision to enable low latency sensory motor control and navigation in a low light and high dynamic environment, where traditional vision sensors fail.

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Davide Scaramuzza, "Autonomous agile vision-controlled drones: from frame to event vision (Conference Presentation)," Proc. SPIE 10639, Micro- and Nanotechnology Sensors, Systems, and Applications X, 106391V (Presented at SPIE Defense + Security: April 18, 2018; Published: 14 May 2018); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2305751.5783288983001.