Related papers: Pointing System for the Balloon-Borne Astronomical…
Autonomous landing of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles on maritime vessels is challenging due to the coupled motion of the vehicle and landing platform in open-sea conditions. This paper presents a reinforcement-learning-based approach for…
Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) have emerged as versatile platforms, driving the demand for accurate modeling to support developmental testing. This paper proposes data-driven modeling software for UAV. Emphasizes the utilization of…
PODIUM is a compact spacecraft navigation unit, currently being designed to provide interplanetary missions with autonomous position and velocity estimations. The unit will make use of Pulsar X-ray observations to measure the distance and…
Pulsed laser ablation propulsion has the potential to revolutionize space exploration by eliminating the requirement of a spacecraft to carry its propellant and power source as the high-power laser is situated off-board. More…
Unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) is becoming increasingly important in modern civilian and military applications. However, its novel use cases is bottlenecked by conventional satellite and terrestrial localization technologies, and calling for…
We present the hardware and software systems implementing autonomous operation, distributed real-time monitoring, and control for the EBEX instrument. EBEX is a NASA-funded balloon-borne microwave polarimeter designed for a 14 day Antarctic…
Based on the need for high resolution underwater visual surveys, this study presents the adaptation of an existing SPARUS II autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) into an entirely hovering AUV fully capable of performing autonomous, close…
This paper investigates payload grasping from a moving platform using a hook-equipped aerial manipulator. First, a computationally efficient trajectory optimization based on complementarity constraints is proposed to determine the optimal…
An external reference system suitable for deep space navigation can be defined by fast spinning and strongly magnetized neutron stars, called pulsars. Their beamed periodic signals have timing stabilities comparable to atomic clocks and…
The continuing monitoring and surveying of the nearby space to detect Near Earth Objects (NEOs) and Near Earth Asteroids (NEAs) are essential because of the threats that this kind of objects impose on the future of our planet. We need more…
We propose an innovative monolithic interferometer to distinguish the topological charge of radiation carrying orbital angular momentum. Remarkably, our method requires to access only a small portion of the entire wavefront. The proposed…
The disassembly of small household appliances poses significant challenges due to their complex and curved geometries, which render traditional rigid fixtures inadequate. In this paper, we propose a modular vacuum-based fixturing system…
This paper deals with the problem of full state estimation for vehicles navigating in a three dimensional space. We assume that the vehicle is equipped with an Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) providing body-frame measurements of the angular…
Employing an inertial measurement unit (IMU) as an additional sensor can dramatically improve both reliability and accuracy of visual/Lidar odometry (VO/LO). Different IMU integration models are introduced using different assumptions on the…
We discuss the possibility of an autonomous navigation system for spacecraft that is based on pulsar timing data. Pulsars are rapidly rotating neutron stars that are observable as variable celestial sources of electromagnetic radiation.…
We present the thermal model of the Balloon-borne Large-Aperture Submillimeter Telescope for Polarimetry (BLASTPol). This instrument was successfully flown in two circumpolar flights from McMurdo, Antarctica in 2010 and 2012. During these…
Motivated by the goal of achieving robust, drift-free pose estimation in long-term autonomous navigation, in this work we propose a methodology to fuse global positional information with visual and inertial measurements in a tightly-coupled…
The task of inducing, via continuous static state-feedback control, an asymptotically stable heteroclinic orbit in a nonlinear control system is considered in this paper. The main motivation comes from the problem of ensuring convergence to…
We explore the range of wide field multi-object instrument concepts taking advantage of the unique capabilities of the Starbug focal plane positioning concept. Advances to familiar instrument concepts, such as fiber positioners and…
Space astronomy in the last 40 years has largely been done from spacecraft in low Earth orbit (LEO) for which the technology is proven and delivery mechanisms are readily available. However, new opportunities are arising with the surge in…