Team GremLion

	Team Supervisors:		Ben M. Chen, Tong H. Lee
	Team Leader:		Feng Lin
	Deputy Leaders:		Kevin Ang, Fei Wang
	Team Members:		Kemao Peng, Delin Luo, Biao Wang, Miaobo Dong, Guowei Cai, Xiangxu Dong, Jinqiang Cui, Swee King Phang, Shiyu Zhao, Beiqing Yang, Kun Li, Mingfeng Yin, Xiaolian Zheng, Jing Lin

The NUS UAV Team from the National University of Singapore (NUS), Singapore, is participating in the ongoing 2012 UAVForge Challenge. In order to compete in the challenge along with competitors from the rest of the world, a rotorcraft UAV codenamed GremLion is designed and constructed specially to tackle the given tasks in this competition.

The GremLion is a unique unmanned coaxial rotorcraft, constructed based on sophisticated mechanical design. It realizes robust and efficient flight behavior with an optimized structure. With its ability to retreat the pairs of blades while not in flight, its dimensions can be reduced to the size of a backpack.

To-date, most of the required tasks mentioned in the UAVForge Challenge has already been realized in GremLion. More specific details are listed below.

Launch Starting Point (Task 1); Transition to Altitude (Task 2)		Maneuver to Avoid Obstacles (Task 3; Task 7)
Several flight tests have been conducted on the GremLion from taking-off from ground to hovering at a designated altitude. The GremLion has demonstrated its capabilities to complete Task 1 and Task 2 in a stable condition.		A decent algorithm has been developed to automatically detect the trunk-like obstacles and dangerous objects in near distance. It will be employed to the GremLion to realize path planning around the obstacles.
Waypoint to Landing Area (Task 4)		Landing Area; Transmit Video (Task 5)
The aircraft is required to navigate to the top of the building and land on the roof top. Our GremLion has demonstrated its ability to land on the roof top of a multi-storey building.		Upon landed on the roof top, it is required to transmit the video images to the ground control station two miles away. A long range video transmission test has been conducted, realizing the video transmission of at least two miles through the use of the video transmitter. With the receiver on the ground two miles away, the continuous video has been recorded on the ground control station.
Performs 'Follow-Me' Task (Task 10)
To realize vision target tracking, a sophisticated vision based target tracking scheme is proposed and tested in flight tests. It employed robust feature extractor and the vision image tracking technique integrated with the flight control systems. It will guide GremLion in following the target on the ground in Task 10.

 

iPad based ground control station:

An iPad based ground control station has been realized, working with a smaller coaxial UAV in our lab now. All we need to do is to unify the communication protocol and port to GremLion.

 

 

Ground Movement of GremLion

The function of the ground movement of GremLion has been realized. Such function can enhance its surveillance capability after landing on a specified  area.

 

 

All the above-mentioned techniques and algorithms have been tested experimentally. They are all included in the Proof-of-flight video submission entry submitted to the UAVForge. The video can be access via http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WtU0y8Le9mA. Don’t forget to leave us a 5-star rating!

 

 

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