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Due to their ability to move without sliding relative to their environment, soft growing robots are attractive for deploying distributed sensor networks in confined spaces. Sensing of the state of such robots would also add to their…
This project was built from a pre-existing architecture that facilitates the planning and automatic execution of drone routes in a known space through a 3D virtual reality environment. Our work consisted in extending this architecture by…
Motivated by a high demand for automated inspection of civil infrastructure, this work presents a new design and development of a tank-like robot for structural health monitoring. Unlike most existing magnetic wheeled mobile robot designs,…
Nature has evolved a vast array of strategies for propulsion at the air-fluid interface. Inspired by a survival mechanism initiated by the honeybee (Apis mellifera) trapped on the surface of water, we here present the SurferBot: a…
Drones have become essential in various applications, but conventional quadrotors face limitations in confined spaces and complex tasks. Deformable drones, which can adapt their shape in real-time, offer a promising solution to overcome…
Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV), commonly known as drones, have many potential uses in real world applications. Drones require advanced planning and navigation algorithms to enable them to safely move through and interact with the world…
Soft-growing robots (i.e., vine robots) are a promising class of soft robots that allow for navigation and growth in tightly confined environments. However, these robots remain challenging to model and control due to the complex interplay…
In pipeline inspection, traditional tethered inspection robots are severely constrained by cable length and weight, which greatly limit their travel range and accessibility. To address these issues, this paper proposes a self-propelled…
In this article, we present a mechanism and related path planning algorithm to construct light-duty barriers out of extruded, inflated tubes weaved around existing environmental features. Our extruded tubes are based on everted vine-robots…
The increasing use of drones in human-centric applications highlights the need for designs that can survive collisions and recover rapidly, minimizing risks to both humans and the environment. We present HoLoArm, a quadrotor with compliant…
Aerial robots are evolving from avoiding obstacles to exploiting the environmental contact interactions for navigation, exploration and manipulation. A key challenge in such aerial physical interactions lies in handling uncertain contact…
This paper presents the design of a small aerial robot for inhabited microgravity environments, such as orbiting space stations (e.g., ISS). In particular, we target a fleet of robots, called Space CoBots, for collaborative tasks with…
This paper introduces a safety filter to ensure collision avoidance for multirotor aerial robots. The proposed formalism leverages a single Composite Control Barrier Function from all position constraints acting on a third-order nonlinear…
Contrary to the stunning feats observed in birds of prey, aerial manipulation and grasping with flying robots still lack versatility and agility. Conventional approaches using rigid manipulators require precise positioning and are subject…
The use of cubesat swarms is being proposed for different missions where cooperation between satellites is required. Commonly, the cube swarm requires formation flight and even rendezvous and docking, which are very challenging tasks since…
Many organisms, including various species of spiders and caterpillars, change their shape to switch gaits and adapt to different environments. Recent technological advances, ranging from stretchable circuits to highly deformable soft…
In this report for the Nasa NIAC Phase I study, we present a mission architecture and a robotic platform, the Shapeshifter, that allow multi-domain and redundant mobility on Saturn's moon Titan, and potentially other bodies with…
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…
This paper introduces a Cosserat rod based mathematical model for modeling a self-controllable variable curvature soft continuum robot. This soft continuum robot has a hollow inner channel and was developed with the ability to perform…
Modular Aerial Robot Systems (MARS) consist of multiple drone modules that are physically bound together to form a single structure for flight. Exploiting structural redundancy, MARS can be reconfigured into different formations to mitigate…