Executing safe and precise flight maneuvers in dynamic high-speed winds is important for the ongoing commoditization of uninhabited aerial vehicles (UAVs). However, because the relationship between various wind conditions and its effect on aircraft maneuverability is not well understood, it is challenging to design effective robot controllers using traditional control design methods. We present Neural-Fly, a learning-based approach that allows rapid online adaptation by incorporating pretrained representations through deep learning. Neural-Fly builds on two key observations that aerodynamics in different wind conditions share a common representation and that the wind-specific part lies in a low-dimensional space. To that end, Neural-Fly uses a proposed learning algorithm, domain adversarially invariant meta-learning (DAIML), to learn the shared representation, only using 12 minutes of flight data. With the learned representation as a basis, Neural-Fly then uses a composite adaptation law to update a set of linear coefficients for mixing the basis elements. When evaluated under challenging wind conditions generated with the Caltech Real Weather Wind Tunnel, with wind speeds up to 43.6 kilometers/hour (12.1 meters/second), Neural-Fly achieves precise flight control with substantially smaller tracking error than state-of-the-art nonlinear and adaptive controllers. In addition to strong empirical performance, the exponential stability of Neural-Fly results in robustness guarantees. Last, our control design extrapolates to unseen wind conditions, is shown to be effective for outdoor flights with only onboard sensors, and can transfer across drones with minimal performance degradation.

There is a lot of buzz these days around autonomous aerial vehicles (AAV) and all of the ways that they can benefit us in our everyday lives. From express deliveries to disaster management, search and rescue operations, and mapping of inaccessible locations, the list of potential applications goes on and on. But when was the last time a drone dropped off an online order at your home? If you are like most people, the answer is "never." While the potential of UAVs to transform our lives in many ways is real, the reason that relatively few of us have experienced that stems from a number of problems that have yet to be solved. One of these problems is the difficulty of executing safe and precise flight maneuvers under windy conditions.

To be truly useful, drones--that is, autonomous flying vehicles--will need to learn to navigate real-world weather and wind conditions. Right now, drones are either flown under controlled conditions, with no wind, or are operated by humans using remote controls. Drones have been taught to fly in formation in the open skies, but those flights are usually conducted under ideal conditions and circumstances. However, for drones to autonomously perform necessary but quotidian tasks, such as delivering packages or airlifting injured drivers from a traffic accident, drones must be able to adapt to wind conditions in real time--rolling with the punches, meteorologically speaking. To face this challenge, a team of engineers from Caltech has developed Neural-Fly, a deep-learning method that can help drones cope with new and unknown wind conditions in real time just by updating a few key parameters.

To be truly useful, drones--that is, autonomous flying vehicles--will need to learn to navigate real-world weather and wind conditions. Right now, drones are either flown under controlled conditions, with no wind, or are operated by humans using remote controls. Drones have been taught to fly in formation in the open skies, but those flights are usually conducted under ideal conditions and circumstances. However, for drones to autonomously perform necessary but quotidian tasks, such as delivering packages or airlifting injured drivers from a traffic accident, drones must be able to adapt to wind conditions in real time--rolling with the punches, meteorologically speaking. To face this challenge, a team of engineers from Caltech has developed Neural-Fly, a deep-learning method that can help drones cope with new and unknown wind conditions in real time just by updating a few key parameters.

With the unprecedented advances of modern machine learning comes the tantalizing possibility of smart data-driven autonomous systems across a broad range of real-world settings. However, is machine learning (especially deep learning) really ready to be deployed in safety-critical systems? I would love to incorporate deep learning into the design, manufacturing, and operations of our aircraft. But I need some guarantees. Such a concern is definitely not unfounded, because the aerospace industry has spent over 60 years making the airplane safer and safer such that the modern airplane is one of the safest transportation methods.