Drones
Russia-Ukraine war: List of key events, day 1,111
One civilian was killed and three more were reportedly injured in one of the biggest Ukrainian drone attacks on Moscow in months. Moscow's Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said Russian air defence units destroyed at least 69 drones flying towards Moscow in a "massive" attack that later reports said involved more than 90 drones. Four airports in the Moscow region and the Domodedovo train network were forced to suspend services due to the attack. Several apartments were also damaged while Russia's TASS news agency reported a large fire in a car park near the Russian capital. Pro-Russian war bloggers said Kremlin forces have advanced further into the country's Kursk region as part of a major encirclement operation to push out thousands of Ukrainian soldiers holding territory inside Russia.
One killed as Ukraine launches 'massive' drone attack on Moscow
Ukraine has launched a "massive" early morning drone attack against the Russian capital that killed at least one person, injured several others and saw the shutdown of airports and damaged residential buildings, Moscow officials and aviation authorities said. The drone raid, the largest against Moscow in months, comes as Ukraine is poised to present the United States with a plan for a partial ceasefire with Russia during talks on Tuesday in Saudi Arabia. Andrei Vorobyov, governor of the Moscow region, said that one person was killed and three more wounded as a result of the raid, which began at 4am local time (01:00 GMT). The wave of attack drones damaged seven apartments in a residential building in the Moscow region's Ramenskoye district, Vorobyov said. Russia's Ministry of Defence said that air defences destroyed a total of 337 Ukrainian drones overnight, with 91 of them over the Moscow region.
Moscow and region hit by 'massive' drone attack - Russian officials
At least one person has been killed and three injured in a "massive" overnight drone attack on Moscow and the capital region, local officials say. Regional Governor Andrei Vorobyev says the casualties were in the towns of Vidnoye and Domodedovo, just outside the capital. Seven apartments in a residential building were damaged. Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin says 73 drones heading towards the city were shot down. The roof of one building was damaged by drone wreckage.
Exploring the best way for UAV visual localization under Low-altitude Multi-view Observation Condition: a Benchmark
Ye, Yibin, Teng, Xichao, Chen, Shuo, Li, Zhang, Liu, Leqi, Yu, Qifeng, Tan, Tao
Absolute Visual Localization (AVL) enables Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) to determine its position in GNSS-denied environments by establishing geometric relationships between UAV images and geo-tagged reference maps. While many previous works have achieved AVL with image retrieval and matching techniques, research in low-altitude multi-view scenarios still remains limited. Low-altitude Multi-view condition presents greater challenges due to extreme viewpoint changes. To explore the best UAV AVL approach in such condition, we proposed this benchmark. Firstly, a large-scale Low-altitude Multi-view dataset called AnyVisLoc was constructed. This dataset includes 18,000 images captured at multiple scenes and altitudes, along with 2.5D reference maps containing aerial photogrammetry maps and historical satellite maps. Secondly, a unified framework was proposed to integrate the state-of-the-art AVL approaches and comprehensively test their performance. The best combined method was chosen as the baseline and the key factors that influencing localization accuracy are thoroughly analyzed based on it. This baseline achieved a 74.1% localization accuracy within 5m under Low-altitude, Multi-view conditions. In addition, a novel retrieval metric called PDM@K was introduced to better align with the characteristics of the UAV AVL task. Overall, this benchmark revealed the challenges of Low-altitude, Multi-view UAV AVL and provided valuable guidance for future research. The dataset and codes are available at https://github.com/UAV-AVL/Benchmark
Real-Time Neuromorphic Navigation: Guiding Physical Robots with Event-Based Sensing and Task-Specific Reconfigurable Autonomy Stack
Sanyal, Sourav, Joshi, Amogh, Kosta, Adarsh, Roy, Kaushik
Neuromorphic vision, inspired by biological neural systems, has recently gained significant attention for its potential in enhancing robotic autonomy. This paper presents a systematic exploration of a proposed Neuromorphic Navigation framework that uses event-based neuromorphic vision to enable efficient, real-time navigation in robotic systems. We discuss the core concepts of neuromorphic vision and navigation, highlighting their impact on improving robotic perception and decision-making. The proposed reconfigurable Neuromorphic Navigation framework adapts to the specific needs of both ground robots (Turtlebot) and aerial robots (Bebop2 quadrotor), addressing the task-specific design requirements (algorithms) for optimal performance across the autonomous navigation stack -- Perception, Planning, and Control. We demonstrate the versatility and the effectiveness of the framework through two case studies: a Turtlebot performing local replanning for real-time navigation and a Bebop2 quadrotor navigating through moving gates. Our work provides a scalable approach to task-specific, real-time robot autonomy leveraging neuromorphic systems, paving the way for energy-efficient autonomous navigation.
KiteRunner: Language-Driven Cooperative Local-Global Navigation Policy with UAV Mapping in Outdoor Environments
Huang, Shibo, Shi, Chenfan, Yang, Jian, Dong, Hanlin, Mi, Jinpeng, Li, Ke, Zhang, Jianfeng, Ding, Miao, Liang, Peidong, You, Xiong, Wei, Xian
Autonomous navigation in open-world outdoor environments faces challenges in integrating dynamic conditions, long-distance spatial reasoning, and semantic understanding. Traditional methods struggle to balance local planning, global planning, and semantic task execution, while existing large language models (LLMs) enhance semantic comprehension but lack spatial reasoning capabilities. Although diffusion models excel in local optimization, they fall short in large-scale long-distance navigation. To address these gaps, this paper proposes KiteRunner, a language-driven cooperative local-global navigation strategy that combines UAV orthophoto-based global planning with diffusion model-driven local path generation for long-distance navigation in open-world scenarios. Our method innovatively leverages real-time UAV orthophotography to construct a global probability map, providing traversability guidance for the local planner, while integrating large models like CLIP and GPT to interpret natural language instructions. Experiments demonstrate that KiteRunner achieves 5.6% and 12.8% improvements in path efficiency over state-of-the-art methods in structured and unstructured environments, respectively, with significant reductions in human interventions and execution time.
General-Purpose Aerial Intelligent Agents Empowered by Large Language Models
The emergence of large language models (LLMs) opens new frontiers for unmanned aerial vehicle (UAVs), yet existing systems remain confined to predefined tasks due to hardware-software co-design challenges. This paper presents the first aerial intelligent agent capable of open-world task execution through tight integration of LLM-based reasoning and robotic autonomy. Our hardware-software co-designed system addresses two fundamental limitations: (1) Onboard LLM operation via an edge-optimized computing platform, achieving 5-6 tokens/sec inference for 14B-parameter models at 220W peak power; (2) A bidirectional cognitive architecture that synergizes slow deliberative planning (LLM task planning) with fast reactive control (state estimation, mapping, obstacle avoidance, and motion planning). Validated through preliminary results using our prototype, the system demonstrates reliable task planning and scene understanding in communication-constrained environments, such as sugarcane monitoring, power grid inspection, mine tunnel exploration, and biological observation applications. This work establishes a novel framework for embodied aerial artificial intelligence, bridging the gap between task planning and robotic autonomy in open environments.
With drones and North Korean troops, Russia pushes back Ukraine's offensive
Russian and North Korean forces have made significant battlefield advances in recent days in the Kursk region of Russia, threatening Ukraine's supply lines and its hold on a patch of land it hopes to use as a bargaining chip in future negotiations, according to Ukrainian soldiers, Russian military bloggers and military analysts. Working together, a new influx of North Korean soldiers and well-trained Russian drone units, advancing under the cover of ferocious artillery fire and aerial bombardment, have been able to overwhelm important Ukrainian positions, Ukrainian soldiers said. "It's true; we can't stop them," said Oleksii, commander of a Ukrainian communications unit fighting in the area, when reached by phone. "They just sweep us away, advancing in groups of 50 North Koreans while we have only six men on our positions.
Multi-Robot System for Cooperative Exploration in Unknown Environments: A Survey
Wang, Chuqi, Yu, Chao, Xu, Xin, Gao, Yuman, Yang, Xinyi, Tang, Wenhao, Yu, Shu'ang, Chen, Yinuo, Gao, Feng, Jian, ZhuoZhu, Chen, Xinlei, Gao, Fei, Zhou, Boyu, Wang, Yu
With the advancement of multi-robot technology, cooperative exploration tasks have garnered increasing attention. This paper presents a comprehensive review of multi-robot cooperative exploration systems. First, we review the evolution of robotic exploration and introduce a modular research framework tailored for multi-robot cooperative exploration. Based on this framework, we systematically categorize and summarize key system components. As a foundational module for multi-robot exploration, the localization and mapping module is primarily introduced by focusing on global and relative pose estimation, as well as multi-robot map merging techniques. The cooperative motion module is further divided into learning-based approaches and multi-stage planning, with the latter encompassing target generation, task allocation, and motion planning strategies. Given the communication constraints of real-world environments, we also analyze the communication module, emphasizing how robots exchange information within local communication ranges and under limited transmission capabilities. Finally, we discuss the challenges and future research directions for multi-robot cooperative exploration in light of real-world trends. This review aims to serve as a valuable reference for researchers and practitioners in the field.
AttentionSwarm: Reinforcement Learning with Attention Control Barier Function for Crazyflie Drones in Dynamic Environments
Tadevosyan, Grik, Serpiva, Valerii, Fedoseev, Aleksey, Khan, Roohan Ahmed, Aschu, Demetros, Batool, Faryal, Efanov, Nickolay, Mikhaylov, Artem, Tsetserukou, Dzmitry
Abstract-- We introduce AttentionSwarm, a novel benchmark designed to evaluate safe and efficient swarm control across three challenging environments: a landing environment with obstacles, a competitive drone game setting, and a dynamic drone racing scenario. Central to our approach is the Attention Model Based Control Barrier Function (CBF) framework, which integrates attention mechanisms with safety-critical control theory to enable real-time collision avoidance and trajectory optimization. The safe attention net algorithm was developed and evaluated using a swarm of Crazyflie 2.1 micro quadrotors, which were tested indoors with the Vicon motion capture system to ensure precise localization and control. Experimental results show that our system achieves landing accuracy of 3.02 cm with a mean time of 23 s and collision-free landings in a dynamic landing environment, 100% and collision-free navigation in a drone game environment, and 95% and collision-free navigation for a dynamic multiagent drone racing environment, underscoring its effectiveness and robustness in real-world scenarios. In recent years, Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL) has emerged as a critical methodology in robotics, driving advances in systems that require adaptability [1], [2], [3].