The main work during the last period was devoted to dissemination (writing a journal paper on a new control scheme we developed and submitted to IEEE Transactions on Mechatronics). Parallel to writing the papers, we started designing a framework for haptic teleoperation of the Skybotix Flybox UAV. The scheme enables to safely operate a wide range of VTOL UAVs by an untrained user in a cluttered environment. In this scheme, the user operates the UAV through the use of a haptic joystick. This scheme includes a novel force-feedback algorithm that enables the user to feel the texture of the environment using a force-feedback joystick. In addition, a novel mapping function is introduced to teleoperate the UAV in an unlimited workspace in position control mode with a joystick which has a limited workspace. An obstacle avoidance strategy is designed to autonomously modify the position set point of the UAV independently of the pilot's commands.
A video that is showing the experimental results of the obstacle avoidance algorithm can be seen at the following link: http://www.i3s.unice.fr/~ducard/UAVProjects.GB.html.