Drone Arena & Motion Capture Facility
Our lab features a state-of-the-art indoor flight arena designed for high-precision robotics research, multi-agent coordination, and autonomous system validation. This controlled environment allows for the rapid prototyping of aerial and ground vehicles in a safe, instrumented setting.
Spatial Dimensions
The facility offers a significant flight volume, accommodating everything from micro-UAVs to larger industrial platforms:
- Floor Area: 7.2m x 7.2m
- Vertical Clearance: 4m
- Safety Infrastructure: Fully enclosed high-durability netting to ensure operator safety and equipment protection during experimental flights.
Motion Capture System: OptiTrack Flex 13
To support research in complex control laws and multi-agent systems, the arena is integrated with a professional-grade tracking cluster.
| Feature | Specification |
|---|---|
| Camera Count | 12 OptiTrack Flex 13 Cameras |
| Positional Accuracy | ±0.5mm |
| Sampling Rate | 120 FPS |
| Latency | Sub-millisecond data streaming |
This system provides “ground truth” state estimation for vehicles in real-time. The high frame rate and sub-millimeter accuracy are critical for:
- Aggressive Maneuvers: Tracking high-speed trajectories without losing marker lock.
- Swarm Robotics: Monitoring the relative positions of multiple agents simultaneously.
- System Identification: Capturing fine-grained vibrational and aerodynamic data for model validation.
Research Applications
Our facility is currently utilized for projects involving:
- Vision-Based Navigation: Testing VLM and SLAM algorithms against high-fidelity ground truth.
- Distributed Control: Validating multi-agent consensus and formation flight.
- Human-Robot Interaction: Safe testing of collaborative robotics in a shared workspace.
