IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine - June 2018 - 15

(a)

(b)

Figure 11. (a) The Team QuetzalC++ drone passes through gate 7. (b) The Team Robotics and Perception Group drone heads toward
the fabric strip of gate 3.

Table 2. The 2017 IROS Autonomous Drone Racing Competition winners.
First Place: Team QuetzalC++, INAOE, Mexico

Record: 03:11.6 (gate 9)

Team members: Jose Martinez-Carranza, L. Oyuki Rojas-Perez, Aldrich A. Cabrera-Ponce, Roberto Munguia-Silva
Second Place: Team Robotics and Perception Group, Switzerland

Record: 00:35.8 (gate 8)

Team members: Matthias Faessler, Alessandro Simovic, Titus Cieslewski, Davide Falanga, Elia Kaufmann, Toni Rosiñol Vidal, and
Prof. Davide Scaramuzza
Third Place: Team First Commit, United States

Record: 01:56.5 (gate 8)

Team members: Daniel B. Wilson, Michael Watson, David Jones, Nathan Heidt, Ali Haydar Goktogan
Fourth Place: Team MAV-lab, The Netherlands

Record: 00:25.7 (gate 7)

Team members: G.C.H.E. de Croon, Christophe De Wagter, Michaël Ozo, Shuo Li, Coen de Visser, Isabella El Haij

14
12

and hardware platforms become available to the public, the base of robotic
technologies seems to be enlarged
accordingly. Autonomous drones are
emblematic of this trend.

13
2016

2017

4
2
0

Teams

Institutions

Countries

Figure 12. Some comparisons of the number of registrations in 2016 and 2017.

are not yet mature enough to be implemented in this kind of new environment,
even though it is also artificial and
designed by robotics developers themselves. This may be due to such elements
as the lack of strong features, the tight
paths, and the overlapping of the monotonic orange color of the gates. Technologies ought to be developed to avoid
excessive fine-tuning of parameters for
the success of racing competitions,
and open-source solutions need to be

tested more rigorously in many different environments.
Finally, Team First Commit was a
group of robot enthusiasts from the San
Francisco Bay Area. Although most of
them are engineers in high-technology
companies, their participation indicates
that robotics technologies are no longer
the domain solely of research institutes.
As more robot-related services and products become available in our everyday
lives and as more open-source software

Acknowledgments
Prof. Baltes' research is partially supported by the Center of Learning Technology for Chinese and the Aim for the Top
University Project of National Taiwan
Normal University, sponsored by the
Ministry of Education of the Republic of
China, Taiwan, and the Ministry of Science and Technology, Taiwan, under
grant number MOST 105-2218-E-003001-MY2.
References
[1] IROS 2017 Robotic Grasping and Manipulation Competition. [Online]. Available: http://
www.rhgm.org/activities/competition_iros2017/
[2] IROS 2017 Autonomous Drone Racing
Competition. [Online]. Available: http://ris
.skku.edu/iros2017racing/

june 2018

IEEE ROBOTICS & AUTOMATION MAGAZINE

http://www.rhgm.org/activities/competition_iros2017/ http://www.rhgm.org/activities/competition_iros2017/ http://ris.skku.edu/iros2017racing/ http://ris.skku.edu/iros2017racing/

IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine - June 2018

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