Related papers: First free-flight flow visualisation of a flapping…

The levels of agility and flight or swimming performance demonstrated by insects, birds, fish, and even some aquatic invertebrates, are often vastly superior to what even the most advanced human-engineered vehicles operating in the same…

Obstacle avoidance in unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), as a fundamental capability, has gained increasing attention with the growing focus on spatial intelligence. However, current obstacle-avoidance methods mainly depend on limited…

Saving energy and enhancing performance are secular preoccupations shared by both nature and human beings. In animal locomotion, flapping flyers or swimmers rely on the flexibility of their wings or body to passively increase their…

The mechanism by which a tiny insect or insect-sized robot could estimate its absolute velocity and distance to nearby objects remains unknown. However, this ability is critical for behaviors that require estimating wind direction during…

Accurate measurements of atmospheric flows at meter-scale resolution are essential for a broad range of sustainability applications, including optimal design of wind and solar farms, safe and efficient urban air mobility, monitoring of…

We examine theoretically the flow interactions and forward flight dynamics of tandem or in-line flapping wings. Two wings are driven vertically with prescribed heaving-and-plunging motions, and the horizontal propulsion speeds and positions…

This paper presents a solution for the autonomous exploration and inspection of Ballast Water Tanks (BWTs) of marine vessels using aerial robots. Ballast tank compartments are critical for a vessel's safety and correspond to confined…

Utilizing wind hovering techniques of soaring birds can save energy expenditure and improve the flight endurance of micro air vehicles (MAVs). Here, we present a novel method for fully autonomous orographic soaring without a priori…

This article presents a novel framework for performing visual inspection around 3D infrastructures, by establishing a team of fully autonomous Micro Aerial Vehicles (MAVs) with robust localization, planning and perception capabilities. The…

Estimating the direction of ambient fluid flow is key for many flying or swimming animals and robots, but can only be accomplished through indirect measurements and active control. Recent work with tethered flying insects indicates that…

Autonomous landing on a moving platform presents unique challenges for multirotor vehicles, including the need to accurately localize the platform, fast trajectory planning, and precise/robust control. Previous works studied this problem…

Whenever a flapping robot moves along a trajectory it experiences some vibration about its mean path. Even for a hovering case, a flier experiences such vibration due to the oscillatory nature of the aerodynamic forces. In this paper we…

This paper describes the development of a novel algorithm to tackle the problem of real-time video stabilization for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). There are two main components in the algorithm: (1) By designing a suitable model for the…

An innovative approach of gaining insight into motor skills involved in human body flight is proposed. The key idea is the creation of a model autonomous system capable of virtually performing skydiving maneuvers. A dynamic skydiver model…

Flying insects can perform rapid, sophisticated maneuvers like backflips, sharp banked turns, and in-flight collision recovery. To emulate these in aerial robots weighing less than a gram, known as flying insect robots (FIRs), a fast and…

Fixed-wing unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) offer endurance and efficiency but lack low-speed agility due to highly coupled dynamics. We present an end-to-end sensing-to-control pipeline that combines bio-inspired hardware, physics-informed…

Automatic optimization of robotic behavior has been the long-standing goal of Evolutionary Robotics. Allowing the problem at hand to be solved by automation often leads to novel approaches and new insights. A common problem encountered with…

To design and optimize arrays of vertical-axis wind turbines (VAWTs) for maximal power density and minimal wake losses, a careful consideration of the inherently three-dimensional structure of the wakes of these turbines in real operating…

Biological studies show that hummingbirds can perform extreme aerobatic maneuvers during fast escape. Given a sudden looming visual stimulus at hover, a hummingbird initiates a fast backward translation coupled with a 180-degree yaw turn,…

This paper presents an algorithm for solving the problem of tracking smooth curves by a fixed wing unmanned aerial vehicle travelling with a constant airspeed and under a constant wind disturbance. The algorithm is based on the idea of…