Erica Rae Chong

'Creating magic with technology': How U of T alumnus Raffaello D’Andrea uses drones in live shows

noreen.rasbach — Tue, 05 Mar 2019 19:27:49 +0000

'Creating magic with technology': How U of T alumnus Raffaello D’Andrea uses drones in live shows

noreen.rasbach Tue, 03/05/2019 - 14:27

Cutline

Raffaelo D’Andrea, an alumnus of the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering, is a founder of Verity Studios (photo courtesy of Verity Studios)

Erica Rae Chong

Topic

Global Lens

Alumni

Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering

Global

Robotics

There aren’t many engineers who can say they’ve worked with Drake and Metallica, but Raffaello D’Andrea can.

D’Andrea, an alumnus of University of Toronto's Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering, is a founder of Verity Studios, where he and his team specialize in creating indoor light displays for live events with dozens of autonomous drones flying in tandem. The Zurich-based company is known for its precision drone technology and its ability to provide a complete solution, from development to execution.

“We’re creating new experiences using robotics and machine learning that you could never imagine that you could do until now,” says D’Andrea. “We’re basically creating magic with technology.”

And the results are certainly magical. Co-ordinated swarms of drones create a mesmerizing dancing cloud of light that move in tune to Drake’s song Look Alive, or provide a dynamic backdrop to accompany Metallica’s guitar riffs. D’Andrea has also worked with Cirque du Soleil on shows that leave audiences in a state of childlike wonder.

That sense of wonder may be the foundation of all D’Andrea’s creations. As a child, he was constantly curious about the world around him and eager to experiment.

Verity Studios collaborated with Cirque Du Soleil to create custom drones that were able to react to any single point of failure (motor, battery, etc) and remain in flight (courtesy of Verity Studios)

Sometimes he was too eager. He recalls learning about water pressure by jumping into a swimming pool with a garden hose in his mouth and bricks tied to his legs, and discovering the properties of aerodynamic stability (or lack thereof) by leaping from his rooftop with a lawn umbrella. His childhood included multiple unplanned haircuts from experiments with fireworks and flammable liquids.

“It just seemed like the most natural thing to me,” he says. “I was curious about the things I saw and I just wanted to learn more about them, so I figured the fastest way to learn about something is by doing experiments.”

Two decades later, D’Andrea still brings the same approach to his engineering and business ventures.

In addition to his work with Verity Studios, D’Andrea is professor of dynamic systems and control at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich, where he has been since 2008. Before that, he was an assistant professor at Cornell University, where he experimented with creating a team of autonomous soccer-playing robots – ultimately leading the Cornell Robot Soccer Team to four world championships at the international RoboCup competition.

While on sabbatical in 2003, D’Andrea dived into developing a new robotic system of a much more ambitious scale. Together with co-founders Mick Mountz and Peter Wurman, he launched Kiva Systems, an automated warehouse storage and retrieval system powered by thousands of autonomous mobile robots.

“I didn’t know anything about distribution when I got into it,” admits D’Andrea. “But what originally drew me to it was that I got to create a completely new way of moving things in factories and that was a beautiful challenge.”

“It’s like when I jumped off the roof of my house – I practised jumping onto the grass first, and I worked my way up to it. I was very scientific, I took a lot of precautions and I made sure that I minimized the risk of hurting myself,” he says. “Likewise in business, you make sure you understand the risks and what it is that you’re dealing with and the consequences.”

D’Andrea also credits his co-founders for softening the learning curve. “That’s the wonderful thing about having other founders in the company. They lived and breathed the business and market part of the problem and my role was to create the solution that would address the market gap,” he says.

Over the course of five years, D’Andrea led the systems architecture, control algorithms development, robot design, and robot navigation and co-ordination. He remained an adviser at the company even after moving to Zurich in late 2007. By the time Amazon acquired Kiva for $775 million in 2012, it was a 300-person company, with robots deployed in more than 30 warehouses and clients that included Walgreens, Staples and The Gap. It has since been rebranded as Amazon Robotics, and is the core of all robotics activities at Amazon.

A singer performs onboard a cruise ship while a swarm of Lucie micro drones circle her (photo courtesy of Verity Studios)

Today, D’Andrea is looking toward his next challenge: taking Verity to greater heights.

The company’s flagship product, Lucie micro drones, offer unparalleled creative freedom. The lightweight multi-rotor drones are equipped with pre-programmable lights and have performed thousands of flights in locations including Madison Square Garden, Changi Airport and the Dubai Mall. But D’Andrea sees opportunities for more versatility beyond the stage.

“The core underlying technology can be used for completely different applications – for example, having the ability to put a sensor anywhere in space and time,” he says.

“Say you want to monitor a warehouse or do security monitoring of a large indoor industrial complex, you can use drones to move sensor to make sure there are no leaks, radiation or large temperature fluctuations in different parts of your facilities.”

Achieving these goals requires overcoming more than just technical challenges, it demands a team that is as co-ordinated as their drones.

“I received a great backbone in science, engineering and mathematics as a student in Engineering Science at U of T, but building a company goes beyond that,” he says.
“You’re bringing something to life that doesn’t exist yet, with a whole bunch of different moving parts – the financial part, the market part and the people part. Especially the people part.

“At the end what makes a startup company successful is not the idea or the amount of funding you have. It’s the people you assemble and how well they work together. It’s about creating something magical. That’s what keeps me motivated.”

From paper aircraft to the real thing: U of T graduates develop next-gen drone

Christopher.Sorensen — Fri, 11 Jan 2019 18:14:10 +0000

From paper aircraft to the real thing: U of T graduates develop next-gen drone

Christopher.Sorensen Fri, 01/11/2019 - 13:14

Cutline

The DX-3 Vanguard is put to the test at Markham Airport. The hybrid drone features vertical take-off and landing, long-range communications and cloud-based analytics (photo courtesy of the Sky Guys)

Topic

Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering

Research & Innovation

Jeremy Wang’s career in aerospace engineering started with folding a simple paper airplane.

Today, he’s leading a team of designers – including many fellow University of Toronto engineering graduates – to create and test an ambitious long-range drone capable of vertical takeoffs and landings.

In his first year as an undergraduate, Wang picked up a cleverly-designed paper airplane flyer from the University of Toronto Aerospace Team, or UTAT, at the engineering club fair.

“I distinctly remember thinking ‘I’m not interested in aerospace, I’m never going to use this,’” he says.

“But for reasons that I honestly don’t remember, I ended up going to their first meeting with a bunch of friends and thought ‘Wow! This is actually really cool.’”

Wang would eventually become the group’s executive director and lead a major expansion of the team. His work earned the attention of the New York-based Aviation Week Network, which named him to a prestigious industry list of future engineering leaders.

But it was his co-op position at The Sky Guys, a local drone company, that set him on the path to his current project. Now the firm’s chief technology officer, Wang and a nine-person team aim to design an unpiloted aerial vehicle, or UAV, that combines the best features of both fixed-wing and multi-rotor drones.

Traditionally, fixed-wing UAVs are optimized to fly long distances, but they require a long runway or launch rail to take off and land. By contrast, multi-rotor UAVs can perform vertical take-off and landings, but are less efficient for long-distance flying and have a shorter battery life.

The teams’ creation – the DX-3 Vanguard – features multiple rotors spread across a fixed-wing body making it capable of vertical takeoffs before transitioning into forward flight. The hybrid aircraft can theoretically carry a payload of up to three kilograms, stay aloft for up to 24 hours, and cover up to 1,500 kilometres before refuelling.

Wang says the prototype can communicate via radio, cellular or satellite signal. “As a pilot, you can be flying the DX-3 Vanguard in Toronto while the drone itself is flying on the west coast of Canada, and you can maintain connectivity over satellite link,” he says.

The drone is also equipped with a cloud-based data management system, allowing users to process, upload and view images and video data from the DX-3 on a secure platform.

Such a drone could be used for a wide range of applications. While Wang declined to provide details specific to the DX-3, he reveals that one of the Sky Guys' key partners is the Ontario Ministry of Transportation. The team was awarded a $750,000 innovation grant in 2017 to develop an artificial intelligence-enabled drone to perform highway enforcement tasks. These could include determining the number of passengers in high-occupancy vehicle lanes, tracking the speed of drivers or monitoring road conditions.

Current federal regulations prohibit drones from flying beyond line-of-sight without a special permit, but Wang remains optimistic regulations will change in the near future. The team has begun early-stage testing of the DX-3 within visual range at Markham Airport, north of Toronto, with plans to test equipment without line-of-sight in the future.

The prototype drone can communicate via radio, cellular or satellite signal, potentially allowing the operator to fly from the other side of the country (photo courtesy of Sky Guys)

So far, the team has evaluated basic functional and performance characteristics, including conventional takeoffs and landings, payload envelope and communications. But the biggest challenge the team had to overcome was human in nature.

“Aerospace engineering involves so many disciplines that have to work together in unison – mechanical, electrical, flight operations, etc. – without necessarily understanding what each person is doing,” says Wang.

“The challenge was nailing that interdisciplinary coordination.”

In addition to Wang, the team includes alumni Lucais Kwon, Carl Pigeon, Carson Dueck, Hussein Khimji and Thomas Ulph, many of whom were also involved in UTAT.

“I think this team is a testament to U of T engineering,” Wang says. “The faculty provides a very solid and rigorous academic foundation, but also a very rich co-curricular environment where you can join design teams, take part in competitions and supplement theory with experiential learning.”

“It’s also kind of nice to have that continuity between friends you meet in university and the people you spend most of your day with,” he adds.

“It’s what I’m most excited about when I come to work every day.”