Today I gave the first lecture at the World Horti Center (WHC). The WHC is going to be an important international hub for innovations in the horticulture sector. During the lecture, I explained my vision on how swarms of drones will be able to contribute to precision agriculture indoors. Hopefully this is the first step on the way to having drones contribute to important matters such as the reduction of water and pesticide use in horticulture.
First lecture at the world horti center
Last few years, I worked together with ESA and MIT on an experiment, in which a drone learns to see in zero gravity. Yesterday, ESA presented our joint work at the International Astronautical Congress in Mexico. In the experiment, the drone started to fly based on stereo vision with two cameras, but learned online to also see distances with a single camera. Already after a few minutes, the drone was able to predict distances with a single camera, which would allow it to keep navigating if one camera broke down. This type of “self-supervised learning” is very promising for future robot exploration in space.
We have also extensively tested the same learning algorithms on a drone on earth (see this article), but on earth it is easier to see distances, since gravity provides a nice reference frame and adds a lot of structure to the environment. In zero gravity, a drone can move in a full 6 degrees of freedom, so it can look at objects in many different ways.
See the news on the ESA page.
Yesterday I went to the first Dutch drone festival to talk about (and demonstrate) small autonomous flying robots. This weekend the festival in Hilv ersum Media Park continues, for instance with FPV drone racing workshops!
Today I gave a lecture on smart robots at the Delft Science Center, discussing the intelligence of big robots such as self-driving cars and small robots, such as lightweight drones. Great to see such a mix of young and old people interested enough in this topic to sacrifice a sunny Sunday morning for it 
Today, the journal of Bioinspiration and Biomimetics published my article on seeing distances with one eye.
Please see my web page for more information.
Yesterday I gave a keynote speech on tiny autonomous drones at the Aerial Robotics symposium in Paris. The symposium featured some very interesting talks, ranging from how a drone can fly endlessly like an albatross (by exploiting the wind gradient close to the ocean surface) to drones that can eject themselves from the water in a similar manner as flying squids do!
Just renewed my web site, making it more accessible and more suitable for viewing on mobile platforms!
