Related papers: Drones Practicing Mechanics
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…
Model-based manipulation of deformable objects has traditionally dealt with objects while neglecting their dynamics, thus mostly focusing on very lightweight objects at steady state. At the same time, soft robotic research has made…
Numerous models have been developed in the literature to simulate the thermomechanical behavior of amorphous polymer at large strain. These models generally show a good agreement with experimental results when the material is submitted to…
Multirotors flying in close proximity induce aerodynamic wake effects on each other through propeller downwash. Conventional methods have fallen short of providing adequate 3D force-based models that can be incorporated into robust control…
Shape is an important physical property of natural and manmade 3D objects that characterizes their external appearances. Understanding differences between shapes and modeling the variability within and across shape classes, hereinafter…
Understanding lattice deformations is crucial in determining the properties of nanomaterials, which can become more prominent in future applications ranging from energy harvesting to electronic devices. However, it remains challenging to…
A novel quadcopter capable of changing shape mid-flight is presented, allowing for operation in four configurations with the capability of sustained hover in three. This is accomplished without requiring actuators beyond the four motors…
Here we use large-scale molecular dynamics (MD) simulations of the high-rate deformation of nanocrystalline tantalum to investigate the processes associated with plastic deformation for strains up to 100%. We use initial atomic…
The plastic flow of a polycrystal is analyzed assuming grains as fine that the rate limiting process is grain boundary sliding, and grains readily accommodate their shapes by slip to preserve spatial continuity. It is shown that thinking of…
Human-robot co-manipulation of soft materials, such as fabrics, composites, and sheets of paper/cardboard, is a challenging operation that presents several relevant industrial applications. Estimating the deformation state of the…
This paper experimentally evaluates continuum deformation cooperative control for the first time. Theoretical results are expanded to place a bounding triangle on the leader-follower system such that the team is contained despite nontrivial…
In this work, we aim to learn dexterous manipulation of deformable objects using multi-fingered hands. Reinforcement learning approaches for dexterous rigid object manipulation would struggle in this setting due to the complexity of physics…
Learning to manipulate cloth is both a paradigmatic problem for robotic research and a problem of immediate relevance to a variety of applications ranging from assistive care to the service industry. The complex physics of the deformable…
Grasping deformable objects is not well researched due to the complexity in modelling and simulating the dynamic behavior of such objects. However, with the rapid development of physics-based simulators that support soft bodies, the…
In this work, an experimental characterization of the configuration space of a soft, pneumatically actuated morphing quadrotor is presented, with a focus on precise thrust characterization of its flexible arms, considering the effect of…
We measure the deformation of particles made of several slender arms in a two-dimensional (2D) linear shear and a three-dimensional (3D) turbulent flow. We show how these measurements of arm deformations along with the rotation rate of the…
Continuum soft robots are mechanical systems entirely made of continuously deformable elements. This design solution aims to bring robots closer to invertebrate animals and soft appendices of vertebrate animals (e.g., an elephant's trunk, a…
Soft porous materials, such as biological tissues and soils, are exposed to periodic deformations in a variety of natural and industrial contexts. The detailed flow and mechanics of these deformations have not yet been systematically…
In this paper, we present a novel developmental reinforcement learning-based controller for a quadcopter with thrust vectoring capabilities. This multirotor UAV design has tilt-enabled rotors. It utilizes the rotor force magnitude and…
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…