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Unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)-enabled wireless power transfer (WPT) systems offer significant advantages in coverage and deployment flexibility, but suffer from endurance limitations due to the limited onboard energy. This paper proposes to…
This paper presents a data-driven optimal control policy for a micro flapping wing unmanned aerial vehicle. First, a set of optimal trajectories are computed off-line based on a geometric formulation of dynamics that captures the nonlinear…
Flapping-wing robots offer significant versatility; however, achieving efficient multi-modal locomotion remains challenging. This paper presents the design, modeling, and experimentation of a novel tailless flapping-wing robot with three…
This paper presents a unique flywheel-based regenerative energy recovery, storage and release system developed at the author's laboratory. It can recover and store regenerative energy produced by braking a motion generator with intermittent…
This paper studies a new unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)-enabled wireless power transfer (WPT) system, where a UAV-mounted energy transmitter (ET) broadcasts wireless energy to charge distributed energy receivers (ERs) on the ground. In…
Current control algorithms for aerial robots struggle with robustness in dynamic environments and adverse conditions. Model-based reinforcement learning (RL) has shown strong potential in handling these challenges while remaining…
Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) swarms are often required in off-grid scenarios, such as disaster-struck, war-torn or rural areas, where the UAVs have no access to the power grid and instead rely on renewable energy. Considering a main…
We present a design, model, and control for a novel jumping-flying robot that is called PogoDrone. The robot is composed of a quadrotor with a passive mechanism for jumping. The robot can continuously jump in place or fly like a normal…
Real-time altitude control of airborne wind energy (AWE) systems can improve performance by allowing turbines to track favorable wind speeds across a range of operating altitudes. The current work explores the performance implications of…
Aerial insects can effortlessly navigate dense vegetation, whereas similarly sized aerial robots typically depend on offboard sensors and computation to maintain stable flight. This disparity restricts insect-scale robots to operation…
Obstacle avoidance path planning for uncrewed aerial vehicles (UAVs), or drones, is rarely addressed in most flight path planning schemes, despite obstacles being a realistic condition. Obstacle avoidance can also be energy-intensive,…
In this paper, we study the feasibility of sending drones to deliver goods from a depot to a customer by solving what we call the Mission-Feasibility Problem (MFP). Due to payload constraints, the drone can serve only one customer at a…
This work investigates a hybrid photovoltaic-wind-battery power system designed to sustain a Mars base under varying seasonal and climatic conditions. The Mars Climate Database was utilized to simulate the effects of seasonal changes,…
Lighter-than-air vehicles or blimps, are an evolving platform in robotics with several beneficial properties such as energy efficiency, collision resistance, and ability to work in close proximity to human users. While existing blimp…
The outdoor navigation capabilities of ground robots have improved significantly in recent years, opening up new potential applications in a variety of settings. Cost-based representations of the environment are frequently used in the path…
The continuous convergence of machine learning algorithms, 5G and beyond (5G+) wireless communications, and artificial intelligence (AI) hardware implementation hastens the birth of federated learning (FL) over 5G+ mobile devices, which…
As mobile robots find increasing use in outdoor applications, designing energy-efficient robot navigation algorithms is gaining importance. There are two primary approaches to energy efficient navigation: Offline approaches rely on a…
The control design of an airborne wind energy system with rigid aircraft, vertical take-off and landing, and pumping operation is described. A hierarchical control structure is implemented, in order to address all operational phases:…
Flying robots, such as quadrotor drones, offer new possibilities for human-robot interaction but often pose safety risks due to fast-spinning propellers, rigid structures, and noise. In contrast, lighter-than-air flapping-wing robots,…
The design and control of winged aircraft and drones is an iterative process aimed at identifying a compromise of mission-specific costs and constraints. When agility is required, shape-shifting (morphing) drones represent an efficient…