Related papers: Ultralight Solar Powered Hybrid Research Drone
Achieving relativistic flight to enable extrasolar exploration is one of the dreams of humanity and the long term goal of our NASA Starlight program. We derive a fully relativistic solution for the motion of a spacecraft propelled by…
The ability to enter in contact with and manipulate physical objects with a flying robot enables many novel applications, such as contact inspection, painting, drilling, and sample collection. Generally, these aerial robots need more…
The emergence of tethered drones represents a major advancement in unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) offering solutions to key limitations faced by traditional drones. This article explores the potential of tethered drones with a particular…
Traditional unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) swarm missions rely heavily on expensive custom-made drones with onboard perception or external positioning systems, limiting their widespread adoption in research and education. To address this…
In this paper, a new under-actuated Bi-Quadcopter Unmanned Aerial Vehicle is introduced. The proposed drone configuration can be controlled similar to a Bicopter. The dynamics of the proposed Bi-Quadcopter is developed using the…
This paper studies a heterogeneous Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) cooperative search approach suitable for complex environments. In the application, a fixed-wing UAV drops rotor UAVs to deploy the cluster rapidly. Meanwhile, the fixed-wing…
An efficient characterization of scientifically significant locations is essential prior to the return of humans to the Moon. The highest resolution imagery acquired from orbit of south-polar shadowed regions and other relevant locations…
We propose a novel hybrid system (both hardware and software) of an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) carrying a miniature Unmanned Ground Vehicle (miniUGV) to perform a complex search and manipulation task. This system leverages heterogeneous…
Interstellar radar is a potential intermediate step between passive observation of exoplanets and interstellar exploratory missions. Compared to passive observation, it has the traditional advantages of radar astronomy. It can measure…
Hybrid aerial--ground robots offer both traversability and endurance, but stair-like discontinuities create a trade-off: wheels alone often stall at edges, while flight is energy-hungry for small height gains. We propose an energy-aware…
Several commercial telecommunication ventures together with a well funded US military program make it a likely possibility that an autonomous, high-altitude, light-than-air (LTA) vehicle which could maneuver and station-keep for weeks to…
Dynamic soaring is a flying technique to exploit the energy available in wind shear layers, enabling potentially unlimited flight without the need for internal energy sources. We propose a framework for autonomous dynamic soaring with a…
In this paper it is presented the concept and design of a new type of spacecraft that could be used to make the first manned interstellar travel. Solar one would integrate three near-term technologies, namely: compact nuclear fusion…
This paper addresses modeling and control of a six-degree-of-freedom unmanned aerial vehicle capable of vertical take-off and landing in the presence of wind disturbances. We design a hybrid vehicle that combines the benefits of both the…
The exploration of the lunar poles and the collection of samples from the martian surface are characterized by shorter time windows demanding increased autonomy and speeds. Autonomous mobile robots must intrinsically cope with a wider range…
We analyse the potential of the electric solar wind sail for solar system space missions. Applications studied include fly-by missions to terrestrial planets (Venus, Mars and Phobos, Mercury) and asteroids, missions based on non-Keplerian…
Typical drones with multi rotors are generally less maneuverable due to unidirectional thrust, which may be unfavorable to agile flight in very narrow and confined spaces. This paper suggests a new bio-inspired drone that is empowered with…
This paper presents a family of autonomous Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) platforms designed for a diverse range of indoor and outdoor applications. The proposed UAV design is highly modular in terms of used actuators, sensor…
Commercial operation of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) would benefit from an onboard ability to sense and avoid (SAA) potential mid-air collision threats. In this paper we present a new approach for detection of aircraft below the horizon.…
Drones are a promising technology for autonomous data collection and indoor sensing. In situations when human-controlled UAVs may not be practical or dependable, such as in uncharted or dangerous locations, the usage of autonomous UAVs…