Stadt Wien Kompetenzteam für Drohnentechnik in der Fachhochschulausbildung (DrohnFH)

Drones and autonomous robots – uncrewed aerial (UAV) and ground (UGV) vehicles – are starting to see use in a variety of civil applications where they carry out tedious (e.g., vacuum robots, other service robotics, and transportation) or even dangerous tasks such as various inspection tasks (e.g., railway and powerline inspection or fire monitoring) as well as tasks that benefit from an aerial perspective such as UAV-based photogrammetry, photography, and videography. Recreational and educational uses of UAV and UGV include various robotics competitions such as the MicroMouse contest, Drone Racing, and recreational drone flight.

UAV and UGV technology is an exciting combination of various technical disciplines, including electronics engineering, embedded systems, control engineering, mechatronics, power electronics, sensor technology, and advanced algorithms for robot navigation, path planning, and mapping. The goal of the project DrohnFH – Stadt Wien Kompetenzteam für Drohnentechnik in der Fachhochschulausbildung (i.e., Drone Technology in UAS education) is to integrate a selection of technologies that make UAV and UGV possible into courses and lectures as the University of Applied Sciences Technikum Wien, thereby boosting student engagement. In the course of the project, engaging exercises, lecture units, workshops, demonstrators, as well as bachelor's and master's projects in the field of drone technology are developed. Furthermore, applied research in the context of the project is conducted.

The applied research portion of the DrohnFH project centers around two major research topics based on existing research work at the University of Applied Sciences Technikum Wien:

  1. Improving functional safety of FPGA-based systems (as used, e.g., for fast sensor data processing) by developing reliability analysis and fault mitigation tools and approaches for SRAM-based FPGAs.
  2. Improving autonomous robot navigation in uncooperative outdoor environments by mapping semantic information about the robot's environment (e.g. estimated traversability) and considering semantic information while planning and executing trajectories..

The project Stadt Wien Kompetenzteam für Drohnentechnik in der Fachhochschulausbildung is a cooperation between the Research Group Embedded Systems at the Department of Electronic Engineering and the Research Group Digital Manufacturing, Automation & Robotics at the Department of Industrial Engineering at the University of Applied Sciences Technikum Wien

This project is funded by the City of Vienna, department MA23, under grant number "MA23-Projekt 35-02".

Project Duration: Feb. 1, 2024 to Jul. 31, 2026