The IMAV 2022 features three competitions, which are explained below.
Tiny drones are lightweight and small so that they are safe for people and can navigate in narrow spaces. These properties make them very promising for real-world applications in which they have to fly in indoor environments. One can think of tiny drones exploring buildings for finding humans in search and rescue, finding gas leaks, tracking stock in warehouses, or monitoring crop in greenhouses.
In this competition, we want to push the state of the art for the autonomy of tiny drones. Specifically, we would like teams to develop the AI for Bitcraze’s Crazyflie nanocopters to perform vision-based obstacle avoidance at increasing speeds. The Crazyflies used in the competition will be equipped with an “AI deck” featuring a camera and the Greenwaves processor, which is able to run deep neural networks. Although the competition allows offboard processing of the (monocular) images, solutions that run purely onboard will receive a higher score.
A major development in the agricultural domain is the transition to “precision agriculture”, in which crop is monitored and taken care of at the plant level. Precision agriculture requires a high level of automation, in order to obtain measurements, interpret data, and take fine-scaled actions. Drones have the potential to play an important role in precision agriculture, as they can move in three dimensions, observing places that are normally hard to access.
In this competition, we want to push the state of the art for drones that navigate autonomously in greenhouses. Specifically, we want teams to develop a solution with one or more autonomous drones that need to inspect a tomato greenhouse as quickly as possible. The goal is to monitor the tomato crop and find a plant with a disease (simulated for the competition). The teams are free to develop any flying solution, as long as the take-off weight is lighter than 1 kg.
Autonomous package delivery is one of the most-awaited uses of outdoor flying drones. However, the challenges to making such drones are daunting. The drones will have to fly possibly large distances, but also need to deliver packages in tight landing spots, requiring vertical take-off and landing capabilities. This poses both challenges for design and control. Moreover, ideally, drones could take and release packages themselves, posing problems of interaction and manipulation.
In this competition, we want teams to autonomously deliver packages to delivery locations of varying difficulty. Moreover, there is an emphasis on the design of small drones able to cover large distances, focusing on endurance and range.
Pre-registering for the competitions
Each competition has a limited number of places for participating teams. Hence, if you want to participate in any of these competitions, please let us know before May 15 with a “pre-registration”.
Pre-registration means sending an email to imavsdotorg@gmail.com, including the following information:
- Team name
- Team members
- Affiliation (University, institute, company, or otherwise) & Country/countries
- Which competition(s) you want to participate in, and what your rough plan is for the competition(s).
- Mention experience with past competitions