Related papers: Time-Efficient Mars Exploration of Simultaneous Co…

Transporting a heavy payload using multiple aerial robots (MARs) is an efficient manner to extend the load capacity of a single aerial robot. However, existing schemes for the multiple aerial robots transportation system (MARTS) still lack…

Low-cost mini-drones with advanced sensing and maneuverability enable a new class of intelligent sensing systems. To achieve the full potential of such drones, it is necessary to develop new enhanced formulations of both common and emerging…

Advanced technological breakthroughs and exceptional levels of innovation are enhancing the capabilities and potential of autonomous unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs or drones), and in so doing attracting the interest of a broader swath of…

Multi-robot autonomous exploration in an unknown environment is an important application in robotics.Traditional exploration methods only use information around frontier points or viewpoints, ignoring spatial information of unknown areas.…

This paper presents a multi-layer software architecture to perform cooperative missions with a fleet of quadrotors providing support in electrical power line inspection operations. The proposed software framework guarantees the compliance…

This paper proposes a novel swarm-based control algorithm for exploration and coverage of unknown environments, while maintaining a formation that permits short-range communication. The algorithm combines two elements: swarm rules for…

An important open problem in robotic planning is the autonomous generation of 3D inspection paths -- that is, planning the best path to move a robot along in order to inspect a target structure. We recently suggested a new method for…

Path planning for robotic coverage is the task of determining a collision-free robot trajectory that observes all points of interest in an environment. Robots employed for such tasks are often capable of exercising active control over…

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…

We present a fully autonomous self-recharging drone system capable of long-duration sustained operations near powerlines. The drone is equipped with a robust onboard perception and navigation system that enables it to locate powerlines and…

This letter presents a complete framework Meeting-Merging-Mission for multi-robot exploration under communication restriction. Considering communication is limited in both bandwidth and range in the real world, we propose a lightweight…

This paper considers the optimization problems that arise to coordinate a tandem between a mothership vehicle and a fleet of drones. %more than one drone. Each drone can be launched from the mothership to perform an operation. After…

Robust motion planning is a well-studied problem in the robotics literature, yet current algorithms struggle to operate scalably and safely in the presence of other moving agents, such as humans. This paper introduces a novel framework for…

Mobile robots hold great promise in reducing the need for humans to perform jobs such as vacuuming, seeding,harvesting, painting, search and rescue, and inspection. In practice, these tasks must often be done without an exact map of the…

In unstructured environments the best path is not always the shortest, but needs to consider various objectives like energy efficiency, risk of failure or scientific outcome. This paper proposes a global planner, based on the A* algorithm,…

As Urban air mobility scales, commercial drone fleets offer a compelling, yet underexplored opportunity to function as mobile sensor networks for real-time urban traffic monitoring. In this paper, we propose a decentralized framework that…

One aspect of the ever-growing need for long term autonomy of multi-robot systems, is ensuring energy sufficiency. In particular, in scenarios where charging facilities are limited, battery-powered robots need to coordinate to share access.…

The limited onboard energy of autonomous mobile robots poses a tremendous challenge for practical deployment. Hence, efficient computing solutions are imperative. A crucial shortcoming of state-of-the-art computing solutions is that they…

In this paper, we simulated a distributed, cooperative path planning technique for multiple drones (~200) to explore an unknown region (~10,000 connected units) in the presence of obstacles. The map of an unknown region is dynamically…

This paper presents evS2CP, an optimization-based framework for simultaneous speed and charging planning designed for connected electric vehicles (EVs). With EVs emerging as competitive alternatives to internal combustion engine vehicles,…