Case study 03Cyber-physical test field
Making coordinated autonomy measurable, observable, and repeatable.
The test field
From 2017 onward, TU Dortmund's Chair of Material Handling and Warehousing transformed its research hall into a cyber-physical test field. Motion capture, RGB sensing, projection, mobile robots, and autonomous drones enabled precise indoor experiments without fixed transport infrastructure.
Attribution
The FLW team built a flexible environment for motion tracking, robot control, human-activity research, digital twins, and autonomous transport. Its drone demonstrator assigned virtual parcels to nearby aircraft and coordinated shared tasks in a swarm.
I contributed to commissioning and integrating the 50+ camera motion-capture system and worked on experiments with a coordinated swarm of up to twelve indoor UAVs. This was team research within the FLW Innovation Lab, not a solo development.
Experimental loop
Capture vehicles and objects throughout the hall.
Turn observations into millimeter-precise states.
Allocate virtual transport tasks to nearby UAVs.
Move, avoid obstacles, and cooperate as a swarm.
Compare autonomous behavior with reference data.
Public evidence
The sources verify the camera setup, millimeter-precise tracking, self-organizing transport drones, and the cyber-physical-system demonstrator. The figure of up to twelve drones is identified as a CV-backed personal detail.