Demo abstract — Hexacopters for everyone: Online access to advanced robotics platforms for your research

We will present our approach to remote experimentation. The system provides access to a well-maintained, high-fidelity hardware-in-the-loop simulation of a flight-validated hexacopter with an autopilot. The whole system has already received the Special Flight Operations Certificate (SFOC) and was used during several missions such as sensor deployment on icebergs, terrain mapping, and structural integrity checks. The system is easily accessible to remote users, and in active use for research and teaching. Users will be able to connect through a remote connection and gain access to the system. Several scenarios are available which mimic different flight conditions and flight paths. The platform supports research from the operating system up to arbitrary application software and thus enables case studies on software and system design, modeling, programming, validation, and verification, as well as robotic operations, mission planning, and simultaneous localization and mapping.