Workshop on Autonomous Structural Monitoring and Maintenance using Aerial Robots

Aerial robotics are rapidly integrated into a wide variety of important applications. But for these systems to be able to present their full potential, they should be able to act as something much more than a position-controlled camera in the sky. Recent breakthroughs in the fields of multi-modal perception, path planning for inspection and exploration, aerial manipulation design and control, as well as multi-robot collaboration bring us closer to the goal of autonomous structural monitoring and maintenance using aerial robots. As acknowledged from both the academic and the industrial sector, such a capability has tremendous potential in critical applications such as industrial infrastructure and industrial plant inspection and maintenance, monitoring of critical facilities (e.g. nuclear), nature conservation and security tasks. This workshop aims to bring together the different research communities, discuss recent results and strategize the next steps towards accomplishing full autonomy for structural inspection and aerial manipulation-based maintenance work-task execution. A rich schedule consisting of presentations from renowned leaders in the field, lighting talks from authors of submitted papers, a poster-session, a demonstration of a comprehensive open source simulator environment to accelerate research, as well as a relevant round table discussion are planned.