Related papers: The ReSWARM Microgravity Flight Experiments: Plann…
Multirotor aerial robots excel at maneuvering in three-dimensional space, and recent advances enable nimble navigation in cluttered and confined environments, especially for small airframes. By contrast, platforms built for high-altitude…
Cooperative transport is a striking phenomenon where multiple agents join forces to transit a payload too heavy for the individual. While social animals such as ants are routinely observed to coordinate transport at scale, reproducing the…
Electronic devices are essential for robots but limit their usable environments. To overcome this, methods excluding electronics from the operating environment while retaining advanced electronic control and actuation have been explored.…
Design of robots at the small scale is a trial-and-error based process, which is costly and time-consuming. There are few dynamic simulation tools available to accurately predict the motion or performance of untethered microrobots as they…
Ensuring safe autonomy is crucial for deploying aerial robots in real-world applications. However, safety is a multifaceted challenge that must be addressed from multiple perspectives, including navigation in dynamic environments, operation…
In-Space Servicing, Assembly, and Manufacturing (ISAM) is a set of emerging operations that provides several benefits to improve the longevity, capacity, mo- bility, and expandability of existing and future space assets. Serial robotic ma-…
Exploration of extreme or remote environments such as Mars is often recognized as an opportunity for multi-robot systems. However, this poses challenges for maintaining robust inter-robot communication without preexisting infrastructure. It…
The aerial manipulator (AM) is a systematic operational robotic platform in high standard on algorithm robustness. Directly deploying the algorithms to the practical system will take numerous trial and error costs and even cause destructive…
There is ever growing demand for satellite constellations that perform global positioning, remote sensing, earth-imaging and relay communication. In these highly prized orbits, there are many obsolete and abandoned satellites and components…
Low-thrust trajectory design relies heavily on repeated evaluations of fuel consumption and transfer feasibility, which require expensive optimal control solutions. In this work, we show these quantities can be accurately approximated by…
Robot autonomy in unknown, GPS-denied, and complex underground environments requires real-time, robust, and accurate onboard pose estimation and mapping for reliable operations. This becomes particularly challenging in perception-degraded…
An important problem in microrobotics is how to control a large group of microrobots with a global control signal. This paper focuses on controlling a large-scale swarm of MicroStressBots with on-board physical finite-state machines. We…
Demand for fast and economical parcel deliveries in urban environments has risen considerably in recent years. A framework envisions efficient last-mile delivery in urban environments by leveraging a network of ride-sharing vehicles, where…
Satellite constellations are transforming space systems from isolated spacecraft into networked, software-defined platforms capable of on-orbit perception, decision making, and adaptation. Yet much of the existing AI studies remains…
Astrobots are robotic artifacts whose swarms are used in astrophysical studies to generate the map of the observable universe. These swarms have to be coordinated with respect to various desired observations. Such coordination are so…
The miniaturization of electronics, sensors and actuators has enabled the growing use of CubeSats and sub-20 kg spacecraft. Their reduced mass and volume has the potential to translate into significant reductions in required propellant and…
There are thousands of asteroids in near-Earth space and millions expected in the Main Belt. They are diverse in their physical properties and compositions. They are also time capsules of the early Solar System making them valuable for…
Parallel self-assembly is an efficient approach to accelerate the assembly process for modular robots. However, these approaches cannot accommodate complicated environments with obstacles, which restricts their applications. This paper…
Space robots have played a critical role in autonomous maintenance and space junk removal. Multi-arm space robots can efficiently complete the target capture and base reorientation tasks due to their flexibility and the collaborative…
Use of physics-based simulation as a planning model enables a planner to reason and generate plans that involve non-trivial interactions with the world. For example, grasping a milk container out of a cluttered refrigerator may involve…