National and International Collaborations

Collaboration with the KPK will not only be strengthened with individual academic partners but also with the corporations and research institutions below:

• The NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) has explicitly stated its interest in this KPK both at the level of research and of education. As the research on autonomous aerial vehicles is key to JPL, there is strong interest in collaborative efforts and future personnel/knowledge transfer specically in the elds of this KPK. JPL has realized that research on autonomous aerial vehicles is a long term effort. Hence, collaboration is planned throughout the duration of this KPK through PhD student exchanges (financially supported by JPL for up to two PhD students per semester). With the graduation of the KPK PhD students, personnel exchange and potential hiring of these high potentials on open JPL positions will ensure continuing collaboration after the period of the KPK.
• The Deutsches Luft- und Raumfahrt Zentrum (DLR) expressed its interest in this KPK  to establish the collaboration with AAU through bidirectional personnel exchange. The group of Dr. Rudolph Triebel focuses on vision based navigation solutions for mobile robotics and has strong interest in aerial robotics. Specically, they see the collaborative navigation technique which we will investigate in this KPK as a kickstarter for advanced collaborative cube-sat technology. A joint proposal in this direction is planned for the upcoming FFG ASAP call. Work in this KPK will strongly support the proposal and, in turn, a winning proposal will then ensure continuation of both the collaboration between DLR and AAU, and the research at AAU in this field.
• At ETH Zurich the group of Margarita Chli is at the forefront of research combining vision based navigation with swarm behaviors of aerial vehicles. As a successful young leader she expressed interest in this KPK (see attached LoI) through close collaboration and personnel exchange even at professor level. Collaboration with her group will be particularly beneficial with immediate results as the interfaces and research tools are
  already mostly unied due to the former collaboration of Stephan Weiss at ETH.