Check out our lightning talk at the PX4 Developer Summit 2022 where we showcase the latest version of our RAPTOR system with a new custom drone frame!

Our system got a showcase video on ETH Zurich social media channels! Watch the video to see our team work and learn about the capabilities of RAPTOR.

In this video, we highlight our fast grasping for different objects against a subtle black background. Note that the video is at full speed - there is only one slow motion clip in there which is slowed down 4 times so you can see the grasping action happening!

We were able to dramatically increase the pickup speed and can pick up objects in a true swooping motion now.

This is our first larger pickup mission - here we are picking up three different objects and dropping them off in a box. This all happens autonomously. This video should highlight the robustness of our approach both in the gripper holding three vastly different objects and our approach in flight.

Here we can give you some insights on how we design our soft grippers: with the power of FEM simulations, we can test out the performance of our ideas without having to manufacture any prototypes. Another benefit is that we can see which areas of the design experience the most stress and add reinforcements accordingly.

This marks a huge milestone for us - we were finally able to pick up an object with our soft gripper prototype mounted on our drone! The drone automatically seeks out the object and picks it up and then drops it in the box and returns to the landing platform.

This is the first successful pickup of an object with our drone! We used magnets to pick a box up - the drone can automatically locate the box with the help of our motion capture system and fly above it to pick it up. This means we can place the box anywhere we want to and the drone will always find it and be able to pick it up! Next up: replacing the magnets with a soft gripper!

We accomplished the first big step towards a grasping motion - flying a swooping trajectory! We will use a trajectory like this to pick up objects once the gripper is finished.

For our custom control algorithms, we needed to analyze the quadcopter motors we are using! We built a thrust stand to allow us to take precise measurements and create an accurate model of the motors.

The first step of starting every project: get familiar with the basics! So, using the prebuilt controller of our drone, we wrote code to make the drone fly different figures on its own!