Case Study: Worcester Polytechnic Institute achieves 3.3× faster motion estimation for high-speed autonomous drones with Vicon motion capture

Worcester Polytechnic Institute - Customer Case Study

Worcester Polytechnic Institute’s Robotics Engineering Department, led by Assistant Professor Nitin Sanket, is developing very small autonomous drones that must navigate cluttered, GPS‑denied environments using only onboard perception and computing. To prototype high‑speed vision and control systems safely and obtain ground truth for sim‑to‑real testing, the team needed a reliable motion‑capture setup — Vicon (14 Vicon Vero cameras and Tracker 4) was deployed in their 36 × 15 × ~12.5 ft lab.

Vicon’s Vero cameras and Tracker 4, integrated with ROS, provided turnkey motion capture plus real IMU and noise data that simplified simulation, testing and the sim‑to‑real loop. With Vicon, WPI increased motion estimation from ~30 Hz to ~100 Hz (a 3.3× improvement), achieved lab flight speeds of about 11–12 m/s, streamlined procurement and support, and is planning additional Vicon systems to reach target speeds of 30–35 m/s.

Worcester Polytechnic Institute

Nitin J. Sanket

Assistant Professor