Related papers: How ornithopters can perch autonomously on a branc…
The endurance and energy efficiency of drones remain critical challenges in their design and operation. To extend mission duration, numerous studies explored perching mechanisms that enable drones to conserve energy by temporarily…
Hovering insects are limited by their physiology and need to rotate their wings at the end of each back and forth motion to keep the wing's leading edge ahead of its trailing edge. The wing rotation at the end of each half-stroke pushes the…
This paper presents a novel algorithm to plan energy-efficient trajectories for autonomous ornithopters. In general, trajectory optimization is quite a relevant problem for practical applications with \emph{Unmanned Aerial Vehicles} (UAVs).…
Autonomous landing on sloped terrain poses significant challenges for small, lightweight spacecraft, such as rotorcraft and landers. These vehicles have limited processing capability and payload capacity, which makes advanced deep learning…
An aerial vehicle powered by flapping feathered wings was designed, developed and fabricated. Different from legacy flapping-wing aerial vehicles with membrane wings, the new design uses authentic bird feathers to fabricate wings. In field…
Perching on the moving platforms is a promising solution to enhance the endurance and operational range of quadrotors, which could benefit the efficiency of a variety of air-ground cooperative tasks. To ensure robust perching, tracking with…
Flapping-wing micro aerial vehicles offer quieter and safer operation than rotary-wing drones, yet achieving precise autonomous control of bird-scale ornithopters remains challenging: lift, airspeed, and turning authority are tightly…
Autonomous Micro Aerial Vehicles are deployed for a variety tasks including surveillance and monitoring. Perching and staring allow the vehicle to monitor targets without flying, saving battery power and increasing the overall mission time…
Aerial robots show significant potential for forest canopy research and environmental monitoring by providing data collection capabilities at high spatial and temporal resolutions. However, limited flight endurance hinders their…
In previous research, various types of aerial robots equipped with perching mechanisms have been developed to extend operational time. However, most existing perching methods adopt either an upward or downward approach, making it difficult…
Autonomous Micro Aerial Vehicles (MAVs) have the potential to be employed for surveillance and monitoring tasks. By perching and staring on one or multiple locations aerial robots can save energy while concurrently increasing their overall…
Birds have a remarkable ability to perform complex maneuvers at post-stall angles of attack. The passive deployment of self-actuating covert feathers in response to unsteady flow separation while performing such maneuvers provides a passive…
Flapping-wing drones have attracted significant attention due to their biomimetic flight. They are considered more human-friendly due to their characteristics such as low noise and flexible wings, making them suitable for human-drone…
Bird-sized flapping-wing robots offer significant potential for agile flight in complex environments, but achieving agile and robust trajectory tracking remains a challenge due to the complex aerodynamics and highly nonlinear dynamics…
The flight characteristics of bats remarkably have been overlooked in aerial drone designs. Unlike other animals, bats leverage the manipulation of inertial dynamics to exhibit aerial flip turns when they perch. Inspired by this unique…
Perception systems for ornithopters face severe challenges. The harsh vibrations and abrupt movements caused during flapping are prone to produce motion blur and strong lighting condition changes. Their strict restrictions in weight, size,…
The 3D flight control of a flapping wing robot is a very challenging problem. The robot stabilizes and controls its pose through the aerodynamic forces acting on the wing membrane which has complex dynamics and it is difficult to develop a…
This work demonstrates universal dynamic perching capabilities for quadrotors of various sizes and on surfaces with different orientations. By employing a non-dimensionalization framework and deep reinforcement learning, we systematically…
Grasping using an aerial robot can have many applications ranging from infrastructure inspection and maintenance to precise agriculture. However, aerial grasping is a challenging problem since the robot has to maintain an accurate position…
Flapping wing flight is a challenging dynamical problem and is also a very fascinating subject to study in the field of biomimetic robotics. A Bat, in particular, has a very articulated armwing mechanism with high degrees-of-freedom and…