Related papers: Multi-Agent Phase-Balancing around Polar Curves wi…

This paper presents a flight control design for compound Vertical Takeoff and Landing (VTOL) vehicles. With their multitude of degrees of controllability as well as the significant variations in their flight characteristics, VTOL vehicles…

The extraordinary aerial agility of hummingbirds and insects continues to inspire the design of flapping-wing drones. To replicate and analyze such flight, computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations that couple flow solvers with rigid…

In this paper we study phase transitions for weakly interacting multiagent systems. By investigating the linear response of a system composed of a finite number of agents, we are able to probe the emergence in the thermodynamic limit of a…

Optimal trajectories that minimize a user-defined cost function in dynamic systems require the solution of a two-point boundary value problem. The optimization process yields an optimal control sequence that depends on the initial…

We introduce SplitFlyer--a novel quadcopter with an ability to disassemble into two self-contained bicopters through human assistance. As a subunit, the bicopter is a severely underactuated aerial vehicle equipped with only two propellers.…

Robotic simulators are crucial for academic research and education as well as the development of safety-critical applications. Reinforcement learning environments -- simple simulations coupled with a problem specification in the form of a…

Although acrobatic flight control has been studied extensively, one key limitation of the existing methods is that they are usually restricted to specific maneuver tasks and cannot change flight pattern parameters online. In this work, we…

This paper presents a framework for controlled emergency landing of a quadcopter, experiencing a rotor failure, away from sensitive areas. A complete mathematical model capturing the dynamics of the system is presented that takes the…

Data driven robotics relies upon accurate real-world representations to learn useful policies. Despite our best-efforts, zero-shot sim-to-real transfer is still an unsolved problem, and we often need to allow our agents to explore online to…

Limited flight distance and time is a common problem for multicopters. We propose a method for finding the optimal speed and sideslip angle of a multicopter flying a given path to achieve either the longest flight distance or time. Since…

This study presents a novel reinforcement learning (RL)-based control framework aimed at enhancing the safety and robustness of the quadcopter, with a specific focus on resilience to in-flight one propeller failure. Addressing the critical…

This paper proposes continuum deformation as a strategy for controlling the collective motion of a multiple quadcopter system (MQS) carrying a common payload. Continuum deformation allows expansion and contraction of inter-agent distances…

The growing number of noncooperative flying objects has prompted interest in sample-return and space debris removal missions. Current solutions are both costly and largely dependent on specific object identification and capture methods. In…

Inverted landing is a routine behavior among a number of animal fliers. However, mastering this feat poses a considerable challenge for robotic fliers, especially to perform dynamic perching with rapid body rotations (or flips) and landing…

Phase lag associated with coherent control where an excited system decays into more than one product channel has been subjected to numerous investigations. Although previous theoretical studies have treated the phase lag across resonances…

Reaching fast and autonomous flight requires computationally efficient and robust algorithms. To this end, we train Guidance & Control Networks to approximate optimal control policies ranging from energy-optimal to time-optimal flight. We…

Flocking behavior has attracted considerable attention in multi-agent systems. The structure of flocking has been predominantly studied through the application of artificial potential fields coupled with velocity consensus. These…

This study proposes an approach for establishing an optimal multihop ad-hoc network using multiple unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to provide emergency communication in disaster areas. The approach includes two stages, one uses particle…

We present Multi-Agent gatekeeper, a framework that provides provable safety guarantees for leader-follower formation control in cluttered 3D environments. Existing methods face a trad-off: online planners and controllers lack formal safety…

Deep reinforcement learning (RL) has made it possible to solve complex robotics problems using neural networks as function approximators. However, the policies trained on stationary environments suffer in terms of generalization when…