The MIT Indoor Multi-Vehicle Flight Testbed

Abstract

This paper and video present the components and flight tests of an indoor, multi-vehicle testbed that was developed to study long duration UAV missions in a controlled environment. This testbed is designed to use real hardware to examine research questions related to single- and multi-vehicle health management, such as vehicle failures, refueling, and maintenance. The testbed has both aerial and ground vehicles that operate autonomously in a large, indoor flight test area and can be used to execute many different mission scenarios. The success of this testbed is largely related to our choice of vehicles, sensors, and the system's command and control architecture. The video presents flight test results from single- and multi-vehicle experiments over the past year.