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UNIVERSITY OF BUCHAREST
FACULTY OF PHYSICS Guest
2026-06-11 23:58 |
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Conference: Bucharest University Faculty of Physics 2026 Meeting
Section: Theoretical and Computational Physics, Applied Mathematics
Title:
Autonomous Navigation and Object Detection for Micro-Drones in Indoor Environments
Authors:
Bogdan-Ionut ZARAFU (1)
Affiliation:
University of Bucharest, Faculty of Physics, 405 Atomiștilor Street, 077125 Măgurele
E-mail
bogdan-ionut.zarafu@s.unibuc.ro
Keywords:
Abstract:
Exploring indoor environments and autonomously searching for objects or individuals represent major challenges in robotics, particularly when dealing with Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) platforms. The aim of this study is the development and testing of a hybrid autonomous navigation system implemented on a Tiny-Whoop micro-drone (a micro-drone with a maximum diameter of 85 mm). To overcome the absence of GPS and the strict weight and computational constraints, the paper proposes a dual architecture. Obstacle avoidance and autonomous navigation are achieved using three multi-zone Time-of-Flight (ToF) sensors, mounted at a 55 degrees angle from each other, which feed data into a Artificial Potential Fields control algorithm (APF). Simultaneously, target identification is performed using a video camera connected to a dedicated hardware accelerator running an object detection neural network. The results demonstrate the feasibility of fusing multiple sensor types and validate their usefulness in applications such as search operations in confined spaces.
Acknowledgement:
This work was supported by a KING CAROL I-st research fellowship granted by the Romanian Ministry of Research, Innovation and Digitalization, contract number 12 RCI/15.12.2025, reg.no. 13545/ 22.12.2025.
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