In recent years, flying robots such as autonomous quadrocopters have gained increased interest in robotics and computer vision research. For navigating safely, these robots need the ability to localize themselves autonomously using their onboard sensors. Potential applications of such systems include the automatic 3D reconstruction of buildings, inspection and simple maintenance tasks, surveillance of public places as well as in search and rescue systems.

ECTS credits: 6

This course has been distinguished with the Teach Inf Award 2012/13 at our faculty for the best lecture in computer science in the summer term 2013. Thank you very much for your support!

In recent years, flying robots such as autonomous quadrocopters have gained increased interest in robotics and computer vision research. For navigating safely, these robots need the ability to localize themselves autonomously using their onboard sensors. Potential applications of such systems include the automatic 3D reconstruction of buildings, inspection and simple maintenance tasks, surveillance of public places as well as in search and rescue systems.

In this course, we will provide an overview of current techniques for 3D localization, mapping and navigation that are suitable for quadrocopters. This course will cover the following topics:

- necessary background on robot hardware, sensors, 3D transformations

- motion estimation from images (including interest point detection, feature descriptors, robust estimation, visual odometry, iteratively closest point)

- filtering techniques and data fusion

- non-linear minimization, bundle adjustment, place recognition, 3D reconstruction

- autonomous navigation, path planning, exploration of unknown environments

The lecture will be accompanied by a lab course where the students will implement their own visual navigation system. This course is an excellent preparation for a master thesis project in this area.

Exercise sheets will be passed out every other week, containing both theoretical problems and programming exercises (typically in C++). In an exercise group every other week, we will discuss the solutions to the theory problems and the programming problems. Active participation in the exercises is a requirement for participation in the final exam. This will be written or oral, depending on the number of attendees. The questions will cover all material presented in class. During the semester, we offer a weekly lab course where students can get programming support for the quadrocopters for the exercises.

The practical exercises will be implemented directly on a Parrot Ardrone quadrocopter, so we expect a lot of fun (and broken propellers).

The lecture will be given by Jürgen Sturm.

Lecture: Tuesday, 10:15-11:45, room 02.09.23 (FMI, Boltzmannstrasse 3)

Teaching assistants: Jakob Engel, Christian Kerl

Contact: visnav2013@vision.in.tum.de use this mail address for all questions related to the lecture and the lab course

Lab course/practice: Thursday: 14:00-15:30, room 02.05.014 (FMI, Boltzmannstrasse 3)

Registration: via TUM campus

Note that the number of participants is limited to 30. Registration in TUMonline for this course starts on 28.03.13,12:00.

The lectures will take place every Tuesday at 10:15 (CT), in the CVPR seminar room (02.09.023). A printer-friendly version of the lecture slides is available here.

The lab courses (mandatory!) will take place every Thursday at 14:00 (sharp), in 02.05.014

Source code for the exercises

• Course evaluation
• Source code for the exercises