Abstract
The International Micro Air Vehicle Conference and Competition (IMAV) is a yearly event that aims at encouraging the development of cutting-edge technologies for micro air vehicles (MAV) to be used in civil applications with an ever-increasing level of autonomy. It combines a scientific conference and two flight competitions, indoors and outdoors, which all aim at pushing, showing and sharing the most recent advances from research groups all around the world. IMAV firstly started back in 2004 and was initially held in some key locations in Europe (Braunsweig, Toulouse, Delft, etc.), becoming thereafter an inter-continental event, with most recent events in Beijing 2016, Toulouse 2017, Melbourne 2018 and Madrid in 2019, from 29 September to 4 October.
The conference part is aimed at presenting innovations in different areas related to drones and their autonomous capabilities, which includes mechanical design, fluid mechanics, navigation, control, sensors, pose estimation, simulation, data processing, etc. Additionally, the flight competition challenges stimulate the research in real-life scenarios, in which several prizes recognize a variety of achievements. This year, the event has a special focus on the growing interest of using flying robots in the area of logistics, in which Correos (Spanish Post Company) acts as Platinum Sponsor and brought real-world elements to both competitions. Correos together with Gold Sponsors Airbus, Parrot, AFOSR and AURA Group, and Silver Sponsor BitCraze, enabled IMAV to contribute to the research on small flying robots.
IMAV 2019 has gathered around 200 participants, from 27 different countries coming from Asia, Middle East, North, Central and South America and Europe. Twenty-two teams participated in the indoor and outdoor competitions and 28 papers were accepted to be presented at the conference, out of which six papers were nominated as candidates for the special award and the best paper award, all of them highly qualified after a blind peer-review process.
All selected papers that are compiled in this Special Edition have undergone a further review process that has come out to improved versions of the selected conference papers, in most cases with new tests and improved conclusions. Selected papers include an interesting combination of topics, ranging from aerial vehicle design and energy sources to control, navigation and perception. Together, these selected papers give an overview of the current cutting-edge technologies in the field of MAV.
Finally, we want to express the hope that the specific nature of this Special Collection on the IMAV19 event (a combination of a scientific conference and a real-world competition) will continue to push the state of the art in the area of small flying robots.