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Bats' dynamic morphing wings are known to be extremely high-dimensional, and they employ the combination of inertial dynamics and aerodynamics manipulations to showcase extremely agile maneuvers. Bats heavily rely on their highly flexible…
Cooperative transportation by multi-aerial robots has the potential to support various payloads and improve failsafe against dropping. Furthermore, changing the attachment positions of robots according payload characteristics increases the…
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…
Crawling is a common locomotion mechanism in soft robots and nonskeletal animals. In this work we propose modeling soft-robotic legged locomotion by approximating it with an equivalent articulated robot with elastic joints. For concreteness…
We provide a method for detecting and localizing objects near a robot arm using arm-mounted miniature time-of-flight sensors. A key challenge when using arm-mounted sensors is differentiating between the robot itself and external objects in…
Legged robots can have a unique role in manipulating objects in dynamic, human-centric, or otherwise inaccessible environments. Although most legged robotics research to date typically focuses on traversing these challenging environments,…
Hummingbirds and insects achieve outstanding flight performance by adapting their flapping motion to the flight requirements. Their wing kinematics can change from smooth flapping to highly dynamic waveforms, generating unsteady aerodynamic…
Our goal in this work is to expand the theory and practice of robot locomotion by addressing critical challenges associated with the robotic biomimicry of bat aerial locomotion. Bats wings exhibit fast wing articulation and can mobilize as…
Aerial robots have garnered significant attention due to their potential applications in various industries, such as inspection, search and rescue, and drone delivery. Successful missions often depend on the ability of these robots to grasp…
Advances in planetary robotics have led to wheeled robots that have beamed back invaluable science data from the surface of the Moon and Mars. However, these large wheeled robots are unable to access rugged environments such as cliffs,…
This work presents an actuation framework for a bioinspired flapping drone called Aerobat. This drone, capable of producing dynamically versatile wing conformations, possesses 14 body joints and is tail-less. Therefore, in our robot, unlike…
For legged robots, aerial motions are the only option to overpass obstacles that cannot be circumvent with standard locomotion gaits. In these cases, the robot must perform a leap to either jump onto the obstacle or fly over it. However,…
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 vegetated environments, such as forests, exploratory robots play a vital role in navigating complex, cluttered environments where human access is limited and traditional equipment struggles. Visual occlusion from obstacles, such as…
With the rapid development of simulation tools, the development and validation of autonomous robotic systems have become more efficient before real-world deployment. This paper presents a simulation-to-real implementation of an autonomous…
The problem of autonomous launch and landing of a tethered rigid aircraft for airborne wind energy generation is addressed. The system operates with ground-based power conversion and pumping cycles, where the tether is repeatedly reeled in…
The ability to have multiple magnetic robots operate independently in the same workspace would increase the clinical potential of these systems allowing collaborative operation. In this work, we investigate the feasibility of actuating two…
This study presents the development and experimental verification of a biomimetic manta ray robot for underwater autonomous exploration. Inspired by manta rays, the robot uses flapping motion for propulsion to minimize seabed disturbance…
The problem of rapid optimal coverage through the distribution a team of robots or static sensors via means of aerial drop is the topic of this work. Considering a nonholonomic (fixed-wing) aerial robot that corresponds to the carrier of a…
The mechanical complexity of flapping wings, their unsteady aerodynamic flow, and challenge of making measurements at the scale of a sub-gram flapping-wing flying insect robot (FIR) make its behavior hard to predict. Knowing the precise…