Related papers: Roll Control in Fruit Flies
Successful aerial manipulation largely depends on how effectively a controller can tackle the coupling dynamic forces between the aerial vehicle and the manipulator. However, this control problem has remained largely unsolved as the…
In this paper we study the controlled motion of an arbitrary two-dimensional body in an ideal fluid with a moving internal mass and an internal rotor in the presence of constant circulation around the body. We show that by changing the…
Reaching fast and autonomous flight requires computationally efficient and robust algorithms. To this end, we train Guidance & Control Networks to approximate optimal control policies ranging from energy-optimal to time-optimal flight. We…
The recent development of novel aerial vehicles capable of physically interacting with the environment leads to new applications such as contact-based inspection. These tasks require the robotic system to exchange forces with…
We investigate the effect of wing twist flexibility on lift and efficiency of a flapping-wing micro air vehicle capable of liftoff. Wings used previously were chosen to be fully rigid due to modeling and fabrication constraints. However,…
We report on experimental and numerical studies aimed at developing an improved paradigm to model animal flight at moderate Reynolds numbers ($ 20 k - 50k $). A series of experiments were performed to characterize the behaviors of…
Rigid grippers used in existing aerial manipulators require precise positioning to achieve successful grasps and transmit large contact forces that may destabilize the drone. This limits the speed during grasping and prevents "dynamic…
Fixed-wing vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) aircraft pose a unique control challenge that stems from complex aerodynamic interactions between wings and rotors. Thus, accurate estimation of external forces is indispensable for achieving…
Inverted landing in a rapid and robust manner is a challenging feat for aerial robots, especially while depending entirely on onboard sensing and computation. In spite of this, this feat is routinely performed by biological fliers such as…
Flying insects are thought to achieve energy-efficient flapping flight by storing and releasing elastic energy in their muscles, tendons, and thorax. However, flight systems consisting elastic elements coupled to nonlinear, unsteady…
Appendages of seeds, fruits and other diaspores (dispersal units) are essential for their wind dispersal, as they act as wings and enable them to fly. Whirling fruits generate an auto-gyrating motion from their sepals, a leaf like…
Biological locomotion, observed in the flexible wings of birds and insects, bodies and fins of aquatic mammals and fishes, consists of their ability to morph the wings/fins. The morphing capability holds significance in the abilities of…
Bistability and snap-through instabilities are central to various mechanisms in nature and engineering, enabling rapid movement and large shape changes with minimal energy input. These phenomena are easily demonstrated by bending a piece of…
Active flow control for drag reduction with reinforcement learning (RL) is performed in the wake of a 2D square bluff body at laminar regimes with vortex shedding. Controllers parameterised by neural networks are trained to drive two…
Flapping animal flight is often modeled as a combined pitching and heaving motion in order to investigate the unsteady flow structures and resulting forces that could augment the animal's lift and propulsive capabilities. This work isolates…
Insects control unsteady aerodynamic forces on flapping wings to navigate complex environments. While understanding these forces is vital for biology, physics, and engineering, existing evaluation methods face trade-offs: high-fidelity…
Fluid flows play a central role in scientific and technological development, and many of these flows are characterized by a dominant oscillation, such as the vortex shedding in the wake of nearly all transportation vehicles. The ability to…
This paper proposes a sliding mode controller with smooth control effort for a class of nonlinear plants. The proposed controller is created by allowing some constant parameters of the earlier smooth sliding control (SSC) to vary as a…
We investigate the hovering dynamics of rigid bodies with up-down asymmetry placed in oscillating background flows. Recent experiments on inanimate pyramid-shaped objects in oscillating flows with zero mean component demonstrate that the…
Flying through body-size narrow gaps in the environment is one of the most challenging moments for an underactuated multirotor. We explore a purely data-driven method to master this flight skill in simulation, where a neural network…