Borrowed Eyes: Markerless Nano-UAV Flight with an Active Quadruped Observer

Abstract:Nano unmanned aerial vehicles (nano-UAVs) can navigate confined spaces that larger robots cannot, but their payload capacity severely limits the sensors and compute available for self-localization in global navigation satellite system (GNSS)-denied environments. We present a vision-based system that localizes a nano-UAV from a quadruped robot with an arm-mounted camera. The quadruped tracks the drone, estimates its position in its own coordinate system using segmentation masks and depth, and transmits that position over a real-time radio link. To ensure continuous tracking, we developed a perception-aware nonlinear Model Predictive Controller (NMPC) that dynamically adjusts the quadruped's body and arm to maximize the drone's visibility, treating observation reliability as a primary control objective. Relying solely on this external estimate, the nano-UAV executed predefined trajectories from takeoff to landing with a median 3D localization error of 59 mm. The system demonstrates robustness against short visual occlusions by smoothly transitioning to onboard inertial flight when line-of-sight is temporarily lost. Ultimately, this framework allows a quadruped to offload the localization burden of a nano-UAV, enabling inspection of complex spaces that neither robot could navigate alone.

8 pages, 7 figures, 2 tables. Submitted to ICRA 2027

Robotics (cs.RO)

arXiv:2610.09967 [cs.RO]

(or arXiv:2610.09967v1 [cs.RO] for this version)

https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2610.09967 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite (pending registration)

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