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Developing aerial robots that can both safely navigate and execute assigned mission without any human intervention - i.e., fully autonomous aerial mobility of passengers and goods - is the larger vision that guides the research, design, and…
Tilt rotor aircraft combine the benefits of both helicopters and fixed wing aircraft, this makes them popular for a variety of applications, including Search and Rescue and VVIP transport. However, due to the multiple flight modes,…
This paper presents a coordination algorithm for mobile autonomous robots. Relying upon distributed sensing the robots achieve rendezvous, that is, they move to a common location. Each robot is a point mass moving in a nonconvex environment…
The joint optimization of physical parameters and controllers in robotic systems is challenging. This is due to the difficulties of predicting the effect that changes in physical parameters have on final performances. At the same time,…
Utilizing a servo to tilt each rotor transforms quadrotors from underactuated to overactuated systems, allowing for independent control of both attitude and position, which provides advantages for aerial manipulation. However, this…
Two-dimensional multilinked structures can benefit aerial robots in both maneuvering and manipulation because of their deformation ability. However, certain types of singular forms must be avoided during deformation. Hence, an additional 1…
Mars has been a prime candidate for planetary exploration of the solar system because of the science discoveries that support chances of future habitation on this planet. Martian caves and lava tubes like terrains, which consists of uneven…
Wheeled robots are highly efficient in human living environments. However, conventional wheeled designs, with their limited degrees of freedom and constraints in robot configuration, struggle to simultaneously achieve stability,…
We propose a novel test-time optimization approach for efficiently and robustly tracking any pixel at any time in a video. The latest state-of-the-art optimization-based tracking technique, OmniMotion, requires a prohibitively long…
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…
During teleoperation of a mobile robot, providing good operator situation awareness is a major concern as a single mistake can lead to mission failure. Camera streams are widely used for teleoperation but offer limited field-of-view. In…
Magnetic levitation positioning technology has attracted considerable research efforts and dedicated attention due to its extremely attractive features. The technology offers high-precision, contactless, dust/lubricant-free, multi-axis, and…
Using Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) to perform high-altitude manipulation tasks beyond just passive visual application can reduce the time, cost, and risk of human workers. Prior research on aerial manipulation has relied on either ground…
Modular Aerial Robot Systems (MARS) comprise multiple drone units with reconfigurable connected formations, providing high adaptability to diverse mission scenarios, fault conditions, and payload capacities. However, existing control…
Aerial manipulation (AM) promises to move Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) beyond passive inspection to contact-rich tasks such as grasping, assembly, and in-situ maintenance. Most prior AM demonstrations rely on external motion capture…
This work develops a unified optimal control framework for a Quadrotor Biplane tailsitter UAV capable of operating seamlessly across hover, transition, and cruise flight regimes. Although the tailsitter configuration enables mechanically…
The waist plays a crucial role in the agile movement of many animals in nature. It provides the torso with additional degrees of freedom and flexibility, inspiring researchers to incorporate this biological feature into robotic structures…
In recent years, autonomous mobile platforms are finding an increasing range of applications in inspection or surveillance tasks, or to the transport of objects, in places such as smart warehouses, factories or hospitals. In these…
In this work, we present Tilt-Ropter, a novel hybrid aerial-terrestrial vehicle (HATV) that combines tilt rotors with passive wheels to achieve energy-efficient multi-mode locomotion. Unlike existing under-actuated HATVs, the fully actuated…
This paper presents the design, analysis, and performance evaluation of an omnidirectional transformable wheel-leg robot called OmniWheg. We design a novel mechanism consisting of a separable omni-wheel and 4-bar linkages, allowing the…