The Autonomous Aerial Lab, located in Abu Dhabi, is an R&D lab with an ambitious vision to accelerate the development of autonomous aerial technologies and create products to be integrated and deployed in key interest sectors in line with the local UAE economy and strategic future government growth plan.
UAVs have the potential to revolutionize many sectors by increasing efficiency, reducing costs, and providing an innovative solution for existing problems related to logistics, agriculture, construction, security, search and rescue, and infrastructure maintenance. The price-performance ratio of processors, sensors, and networking infrastructure, which has dropped significantly over the last decade, has contributed to the rapid transition of these machines from research laboratories to real-world scenarios. UAVs can be a viable and cost-effective solution for autonomous inspection of cluttered, confined, and hazardous remote GPS-denied environments. Autonomous drones have the potential to outperform human pilots in terms of safety, reliability, and mission duration. Nevertheless, UAV technologies have made huge progress in the past decade. General persistent and reliable autonomy everywhere and in all conditions is still a very difficult problem, highlighted by the lack of commercial solutions that tackle many of the challenging application domains (e.g., GPS denied environments, extreme environments, swarm autonomy).
We have created a vibrant ecosystem to address key research and technological challenges. We have developed the appropriate frameworks for technology transfer and research commercialization. The Autonomous Aerial Lab’s goal is to contribute to the growth of the vibrant UAE economy ecosystem by proposing sustainable, cost-effective, and human-friendly solutions, which can be directly integrated and customized for users’ needs.
The Autonomous Aerial Lab aims to shape and impact the future of advanced aerial autonomy by employing advanced applied research capabilities and technologies to develop cutting-edge and cost-effective autonomous aerial solutions and products.
The Autonomous Aerial Lab will play an integral part in enabling knowledge transfer to both public and private sectors in the UAE’s ecosystem by integrating cutting-edge technologies and disruptive products and services into governmental, industrial and cultural needs.
The Autonomous Aerial Lab aims to create customized, unique solutions, products, and spin-off companies focusing on a variety of sectors in line with local and international market needs.
As a research and development laboratory, we have unique capabilities and talents with the goal to deliver reliable, cost-effective, and unique products. Our solutions will reduce operational time and costs, while concurrently increasing efficiency and productivity. Our highly specialized laboratory and interdisciplinary research and development capabilities allow us to bring the right mix of talent, experience and creativity to every product. The Autonomous Aerial Lab combines the best of both applied research and engineering capabilities to provide unsurpassed expertise, technical solutions, and product development know-how to our customers and industrial partners.
The lab is currently relocating to a new dedicated 600 square meters area with an indoor flying arena for testing and an adjacent office area with workstations for research, development, fabrication and assembly of UAV related systems and products.
The lab performs the fundamental and applied research in the area of UAV autonomy to develop cutting-edge solutions
for deployment in strategically identified future products and markets:
GPS denied localization, navigation, exploration and 3D mapping, novel perception-action paradigms
The ability to physically interact and transport objects in the environment using UAVs
Ultra-long endurance UAVs for various applications
Formation control, swarm tactics and mobilization of a swarm of UAVs
Evolving morphology systems and systems with adaptive designs
advanced decision making, sensing, perception and interaction while on autonomous missions
Explore our unique research and development capabilities; let’s build the future
of advanced aerial autonomy together.
The Autonomous Aerial Lab solutions will impact multiple sectors of the local and international market: