@inproceedings{LudowicyRingsFingeretal.2018,
  author    = {Ludowicy, Jonas and Rings, Ren{\´e} and Finger, Felix and Braun, Carsten},
  title     = {Sizing Studies of Light Aircraft with Parallel Hybrid Propulsion Systems},
  series = {Deutscher Luft- und Raumfahrtkongress 2018},
  booktitle = {Deutscher Luft- und Raumfahrtkongress 2018},
  doi       = {10.25967/480227},
  pages     = {15 S.},
  year      = {2018},
  language  = {en}
}
@inproceedings{FingerBraunBil2018,
  author    = {Finger, Felix and Braun, Carsten and Bil, Cees},
  title     = {Case studies in initial sizing for hybrid-electric general aviation aircraft},
  series = {2018 AIAA/IEEE Electric Aircraft Technologies Symposium, Cincinnati, Ohio},
  booktitle = {2018 AIAA/IEEE Electric Aircraft Technologies Symposium, Cincinnati, Ohio},
  doi       = {10.2514/6.2018-5005},
  year      = {2018},
  language  = {en}
}
@article{FingerBraunBil2018,
  author    = {Finger, Felix and Braun, Carsten and Bil, Cees},
  title     = {Impact of electric propulsion technology and mission requirements on the performance of VTOL UAVs},
  series = {CEAS Aeronautical Journal},
  volume    = {10},
  journal   = {CEAS Aeronautical Journal},
  number    = {3},
  publisher = {Springer},
  issn      = {1869-5582 print},
  doi       = {10.1007/s13272-018-0352-x},
  pages     = {843},
  year      = {2018},
  abstract  = {One of the engineering challenges in aviation is the design of transitioning vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) aircraft. Thrust-borne flight implies a higher mass fraction of the propulsion system, as well as much increased energy consumption in the take-off and landing phases. This mass increase is typically higher for aircraft with a separate lift propulsion system than for aircraft that use the cruise propulsion system to support a dedicated lift system. However, for a cost-benefit trade study, it is necessary to quantify the impact the VTOL requirement and propulsion configuration has on aircraft mass and size. For this reason, sizing studies are conducted. This paper explores the impact of considering a supplemental electric propulsion system for achieving hovering flight. Key variables in this study, apart from the lift system configuration, are the rotor disk loading and hover flight time, as well as the electrical systems technology level for both batteries and motors. Payload and endurance are typically used as the measures of merit for unmanned aircraft that carry electro-optical sensors, and therefore the analysis focuses on these particular parameters.},
  language  = {en}
}
@article{StiemerThomaBraun2023,
  author    = {Stiemer, Luc Nicolas and Thoma, Andreas and Braun, Carsten},
  title     = {MBT3D: Deep learning based multi-object tracker for bumblebee 3D flight path estimation},
  series = {PLoS ONE},
  volume    = {18},
  journal   = {PLoS ONE},
  number    = {9},
  publisher = {PLOS},
  address   = {San Fancisco},
  issn      = {1932-6203},
  doi       = {10.1371/journal.pone.0291415},
  pages     = {e0291415},
  year      = {2023},
  abstract  = {This work presents the Multi-Bees-Tracker (MBT3D) algorithm, a Python framework implementing a deep association tracker for Tracking-By-Detection, to address the challenging task of tracking flight paths of bumblebees in a social group. While tracking algorithms for bumblebees exist, they often come with intensive restrictions, such as the need for sufficient lighting, high contrast between the animal and background, absence of occlusion, significant user input, etc. Tracking flight paths of bumblebees in a social group is challenging. They suddenly adjust movements and change their appearance during different wing beat states while exhibiting significant similarities in their individual appearance. The MBT3D tracker, developed in this research, is an adaptation of an existing ant tracking algorithm for bumblebee tracking. It incorporates an offline trained appearance descriptor along with a Kalman Filter for appearance and motion matching. Different detector architectures for upstream detections (You Only Look Once (YOLOv5), Faster Region Proposal Convolutional Neural Network (Faster R-CNN), and RetinaNet) are investigated in a comparative study to optimize performance. The detection models were trained on a dataset containing 11359 labeled bumblebee images. YOLOv5 reaches an Average Precision of AP = 53, 8\%, Faster R-CNN achieves AP = 45, 3\% and RetinaNet AP = 38, 4\% on the bumblebee validation dataset, which consists of 1323 labeled bumblebee images. The tracker's appearance model is trained on 144 samples. The tracker (with Faster R-CNN detections) reaches a Multiple Object Tracking Accuracy MOTA = 93, 5\% and a Multiple Object Tracking Precision MOTP = 75, 6\% on a validation dataset containing 2000 images, competing with state-of-the-art computer vision methods. The framework allows reliable tracking of different bumblebees in the same video stream with rarely occurring identity switches (IDS). MBT3D has much lower IDS than other commonly used algorithms, with one of the lowest false positive rates, competing with state-of-the-art animal tracking algorithms. The developed framework reconstructs the 3-dimensional (3D) flight paths of the bumblebees by triangulation. It also handles and compares two alternative stereo camera pairs if desired.},
  language  = {en}
}
@inproceedings{FingerBraunBil2017,
  author    = {Finger, Felix and Braun, Carsten and Bil, Cees},
  title     = {The Impact of Electric Propulsion on the Performance of VTOL UAVs},
  series = {Deutscher Luft- und Raumfahrtkongress 2017, DLRK , M{\"u}nchen},
  booktitle = {Deutscher Luft- und Raumfahrtkongress 2017, DLRK , M{\"u}nchen},
  year      = {2017},
  language  = {en}
}
@inproceedings{FingerBraunBil2017,
  author    = {Finger, Felix and Braun, Carsten and Bil, Cees},
  title     = {A Review of Configuration Design for Distributed Propulsion Transitioning VTOL Aircraft},
  series = {Asia-Pacific International Symposium on Aerospace Technology 2017, APISAT 2017, Seoul, Korea},
  booktitle = {Asia-Pacific International Symposium on Aerospace Technology 2017, APISAT 2017, Seoul, Korea},
  pages     = {15 Seiten},
  year      = {2017},
  language  = {en}
}
@inproceedings{FingerBraunBil2018,
  author    = {Finger, Felix and Braun, Carsten and Bil, Cees},
  title     = {An Initial Sizing Methodology for Hybrid-Electric Light Aircraft},
  series = {AIAA AVIATION Forum 2018 Aviation Technology, Integration, and Operations Conference, Atlanta, Georgia, June 25 - 29, 2018},
  booktitle = {AIAA AVIATION Forum 2018 Aviation Technology, Integration, and Operations Conference, Atlanta, Georgia, June 25 - 29, 2018},
  doi       = {10.2514/6.2018-4229},
  year      = {2018},
  language  = {en}
}