Freyja: A Full Multirotor System for Agile & Precise Outdoor Flights

Ajay Shankar, Sebastian G. Elbaum, Carrick Detweiler

Abstract: Several independent approaches exist for state estimation and control of multirotor unmanned aerial systems (UASs) that address specific and constrained operational conditions. This work presents a complete end-to-end pipeline that enables precise, aggressive and agile maneuvers for multirotor UASs under real and challenging outdoor environments. We leverage state-of-the-art optimal methods from the literature for trajectory planning and control, such that designing and executing dynamic paths is fast, robust and easy to customize for a particular application. The complete pipeline, built entirely using commercially available components, is made open-source and fully documented to facilitate adoption. We demonstrate its performance in a variety of operational settings, such as hovering at a spot under dynamic wind speeds of up to 5– 6m/s (12–15mi/h) while staying within 12cm of 3D error. We also characterize its capabilities in flying high-speed trajectories outdoors, and enabling fast aerial docking with a moving target with planning and interception occurring in under 8s.