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In this paper, we study the control design of an automatic crosswind stabilization system for a novel, buoyantly-assisted aerial transportation vehicle. This vehicle has several advantages over other aircraft including the ability to…
Floating-base multi-link robots can change their shape during flight, making them well-suited for applications in confined environments such as autonomous inspection and search and rescue. However, trajectory planning for such systems…
Soft-actuated insect-scale micro aerial vehicles (IMAVs) pose unique challenges for designing robust and computationally efficient controllers. At the millimeter scale, fast robot dynamics ($\sim$ms), together with system delay, model…
An approach to control tethered wings for airborne wind energy is proposed. A fixed length of the lines is considered, and the aim of the control system is to obtain figure-eight crosswind trajectories. The proposed technique is based on…
Extrinsic manipulation, a technique that enables robots to leverage extrinsic resources for object manipulation, presents practical yet challenging scenarios. Particularly in the context of extrinsic manipulation on a supporting plane,…
Brachiation is a dynamic, coordinated swinging maneuver of body and arms used by monkeys and apes to move between branches. As a unique underactuated mode of locomotion, it is interesting to study from a robotics perspective since it can…
When pushing the speed limit for aggressive off-road navigation on uneven terrain, it is inevitable that vehicles may become airborne from time to time. During time-sensitive tasks, being able to fly over challenging terrain can also save…
This paper introduces a novel compliant mechanism combining lightweight and energy dissipation for aerial physical interaction. Weighting 400~g at take-off, the mechanism is actuated in the forward body direction, enabling precise position…
This paper addresses the modeling and attitude control of jumping quadrupeds in low-gravity environments. First, a convex decomposition procedure is presented to generate high-accuracy and low-cost collision geometries for quadrupeds…
In the field of autonomous Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) landing, conventional approaches fall short in delivering not only the required precision but also the resilience against environmental disturbances. Yet, learning-based algorithms…
Estimating the pose of an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) or drone is a challenging task. It is useful for many applications such as navigation, surveillance, tracking objects on the ground, and 3D reconstruction. In this work, we present a…
Rigid grippers used in existing aerial manipulators require precise positioning to achieve successful grasps and transmit large contact forces that may destabilize the drone. This limits the speed during grasping and prevents "dynamic…
There is a growing need for uncrewed aerial vehicles (UAVs) to operate in cities. However, the uneven urban landscape and complex street systems cause large-scale wind gusts that challenge the safe and effective operation of UAVs. Current…
In this article, we show that learned policies can be applied to solve legged locomotion control tasks with extensive flight phases, such as those encountered in space exploration. Using an off-the-shelf deep reinforcement learning…
Robots are increasingly being deployed in agriculture to support sustainable practices and improve productivity. They offer strong potential to enable precise, efficient, and environmentally friendly operations. However, most existing…
This thesis presents a unified control framework for agile and fault-tolerant flight of the Multi-Modal Mobility Morphobot (M4) in aerial mode. The M4 robot is capable of transitioning between ground and aerial locomotion. The articulated…
Autonomous Nano Aerial Vehicles have been increasingly popular in surveillance and monitoring operations due to their efficiency and maneuverability. Once a target location has been reached, drones do not have to remain active during the…
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 are known for their pronounced, fast wing articulations,…
Arboreal environments challenge current robots but are deftly traversed by many familiar animal locomotors such as squirrels. We present a small, 450 g robot "Pinto" developed for tree-jumping, a behavior seen in squirrels but rarely in…
This paper proposes a computationally efficient method to estimate the time-varying relative pose between two visual-inertial sensor rigs mounted on the flexible wings of a fixed-wing unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV). The estimated relative…