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Artificial intelligence-powered pocket-sized air robots have the potential to revolutionize the Internet-of-Things ecosystem, acting as autonomous, unobtrusive, and ubiquitous smart sensors. With a few cm$^{2}$ form-factor, nano-sized…
A complete mechatronic design of a minimal configuration brachiation robot is presented. The robot consists of a single rigid rod with gripper mechanisms attached to both ends. The grippers are used to hang the robot on a horizontal bar on…
Fixed-wing unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) offer significant performance advantages over rotary-wing UAVs in terms of speed, endurance, and efficiency. However, these vehicles have traditionally been severely limited with regards to…
Generating dynamic jumping motions on legged robots remains a challenging control problem as the full flight phase and large landing impact are expected. Compared to quadrupedal robots or other multi-legged robots, bipedal robots place…
Recently, needs for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) that are attachable to the wall have been highlighted. As one of the ways to address the need, researches on various tilting multirotors that can increase maneuverability has been…
In this paper, we present a control design methodology, stability criteria, and performance bounds for autonomous helicopter aerial refueling. Autonomous aerial refueling is particularly difficult due to the aerodynamic interaction between…
The aim of this paper is to design a new type of grasping and perching unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), called Flexbee, which features a soft vector-propulsion nozzle (SVPN). Compared to previous UAVs, Flexbee integrates flight, grasping, and…
Inspired by flight characteristics captured from live Monarch butterflies, an optimal control problem is presented while accounting the effects of low-frequency flapping and abdomen undulation. A flapping-wing aerial vehicle is modeled as…
State estimation and control is a well-studied problem in conventional aerial vehicles such as multi-rotors. But multi-rotors, while versatile, are not suitable for all applications. Due to turbulent airflow from ground effects,…
Tiltrotors are an aircraft concept with the ability to rotate their rotors freely, achieving vertical take-off and fast forward flight. The combination of helicopter and fixed-wing flight into one aircraft provides versatility in mission…
Airborne insects generate a leading edge vortex when they flap their wings. This coherent vortex is a low pressure region that enhances the lift of flapping wings compared to fixed wings. Insect wings are thin membranes strengthened by a…
This paper addresses the modeling and attitude control of jumping quadrupeds in low-gravity environments. First, a convex decomposition procedure is presented to generate high-accuracy and low-cost collision geometries for quadrupeds…
Flying insects are capable of vision-based navigation in cluttered environments, reliably avoiding obstacles through fast and agile maneuvers, while being very efficient in the processing of visual stimuli. Meanwhile, autonomous micro air…
Medium and large insects in normal hovering have horizontal, planar up- and downstrokes1-4. The lift of the two half-strokes, generated by the leading-edge vortex, provides the weight-supporting vertical force. But for small insects (wing…
From a maneuverability perspective, the main advantage of tilting multirotor UAVs lies in the dynamic variability of the feasible executable wrench, which represents a key asset for physical interaction tasks. Accordingly, cant-angle…
Our work aims to make significant strides in understanding unexplored locomotion control paradigms based on the integration of posture manipulation and thrust vectoring. These techniques are commonly seen in nature, such as Chukar birds…
Flapping animal flight is often modeled as a combined pitching and heaving motion in order to investigate the unsteady flow structures and resulting forces that could augment the animal's lift and propulsive capabilities. This work isolates…
Many aerial robotic applications require the ability to land on moving platforms, such as delivery trucks and marine research boats. We present a method to autonomously land an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle on a moving vehicle. A visual servoing…
Birds rely on active high-acceleration morphing and flapping to navigate complex airflows, but they can also maintain stable fixed-wing postures under persistent atmospheric disturbances. Here, we show that avian wings exhibit aerodynamic…
From ancient times, humans have been using cables and ropes to tie, carry, and manipulate objects by folding knots. However, automating knot folding is challenging because it requires dexterity to move a cable over and under itself. In this…