Related papers: An Investigation into Active Control for Accessibl…

Small satellites and autonomous vehicles have greatly evolved in the last few decades. Hundreds of small satellites have been launched with increasing functionalities, in the last few years. Likewise, numerous autonomous vehicles have been…

This study evaluates a technique for determining the mass of a potentially hazardous asteroid from a high-speed flyby in the context of a rapid reconnaissance planetary defense scenario. We consider a host spacecraft that dispenses a small…

Space interferometry is the inevitable endpoint of high angular resolution astrophysics, and a key technology that can be leveraged to analyse exoplanet formation and atmospheres with exceptional detail. However, the anticipated cost of…

Traditional vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) aircraft can not achieve optimal efficiency for various payload weights and has limited mobility due to its under-actuation. With the thrust-vectoring mechanism, the proposed modular team UAV…

This article presents a path-following control law for autonomous orbital maintenance of small body missions. The control law is robust, stable, and capable of controlling only the orbital geometry, allowing the spacecraft to operate with…

CubeSats and small satellites are emerging as low-cost tools to perform astronomy, exoplanet searches and earth observation. These satellites can be dedicated to pointing at targets for weeks or months at a time. This is typically not…

Since the early 2000' years, the CubeSats have been growing and getting more and more "space" in the Space industry. Their short development schedule, low cost equipment and piggyback launches create a new way to access the space, provide…

This paper addresses the problem of thrust estimation and control for the rotors of small-sized multirotors Uncrewed Aerial Vehicles (UAVs). Accurate control of the thrust generated by each rotor during flight is one of the main challenges…

Attitude control hardware for small satellites is often limited in power and space availability given the importance of the science instruments they exist to transport. To mitigate this, a dual-spin stabilized satellite actuated via…

With the ever increasing number of active satellites in space, the rising demand for larger formations of small satellites and the commercialization of the space industry (so-called New Space), the realization of manufacturing processes in…

Future SAE Level 4 and Level 5 autonomous vehicles will require novel applications of localization, perception, control and artificial intelligence technology in order to offer innovative and disruptive solutions to current mobility…

Nano-size drones hold enormous potential to explore unknown and complex environments. Their small size makes them agile and safe for operation close to humans and allows them to navigate through narrow spaces. However, their tiny size and…

Indoor micro-aerial vehicles (MAVs) are increasingly used for tasks that require close proximity to people, yet practitioners lack practical methods to tune motion limits based on measured impact risk. We present an end-to-end, open…

One of the primary objectives of small satellites is to reduce the costs associated with spacecraft development and operations as compared to traditional spacecraft missions. Small satellite missions are generally able to reduce mission…

This paper presents a strategy for optimal manoeuvre design of multi-satellite formation flying in low Earth orbit environment, with the aim of providing a tool for mission operation design. The proposed methodology for formation flying…

Small low-cost instruments enable new and exciting mission opportunities yet their constrained volume and limited budgets make them especially susceptible to suffering anomalies during flight. Radiation effects as well as sensor or actuator…

Insect-scale micro-aerial vehicles, especially lightweight, flapping-wing robots, are becoming increasingly important for safe motion sensing in spatially constrained environments such as living spaces. However, yaw control using flapping…

This paper details our journey in designing and selecting a suitable application sandboxing mechanism for a satellite under development, with a focus on small satellites. Central to our study is the development of selection criteria for…

Airborne wind energy is a new renewable technology that promises to deliver electricity at low costs and in large quantities. Despite the steadily growing interest in this field, very limited results with real-world data have been reported…

Learning-based controllers have achieved impressive performance in agile quadrotor flight but typically rely on massive training in simulation, necessitating accurate system identification for effective Sim2Real transfer. However, even with…