Related papers: Aerial Robots Carrying Flexible Cables: Dynamic Sh…
Practical deployments of coordinated fleets of mobile robots in different environments have revealed the benefits of maintaining small distances between robots, especially as they move at higher speeds. However, this is counter-intuitive in…
Automatic optimization of robotic behavior has been the long-standing goal of Evolutionary Robotics. Allowing the problem at hand to be solved by automation often leads to novel approaches and new insights. A common problem encountered with…
Model predictive controllers use dynamics models to solve constrained optimal control problems. However, computational requirements for real-time control have limited their use to systems with low-dimensional models. Nevertheless,…
Model-based control requires an accurate model of the system dynamics for precisely and safely controlling the robot in complex and dynamic environments. Moreover, in the presence of variations in the operating conditions, the model should…
The mechanical simplicity, hover capabilities, and high agility of quadrotors lead to a fast adaption in the industry for inspection, exploration, and urban aerial mobility. On the other hand, the unstable and underactuated dynamics of…
The previously introduced aerial manipulation systems suffer from either limited end-effector DOF or small payload capacity. In this dissertation, a quadrotor with a 2-DOF manipulator is investigated that has a unique topology to enable the…
Aerial transportation using quadrotors with cable-suspended payloads holds great potential for applications in disaster response, logistics, and infrastructure maintenance. However, their hybrid and underactuated dynamics pose significant…
We present an algorithm for the approximation of a finite horizon optimal control problem for advection-diffusion equations. The method is based on the coupling between an adaptive POD representation of the solution and a Dynamic…
Reduced basis approximations of Optimal Control Problems (OCPs) governed by steady partial differential equations (PDEs) with random parametric inputs are analyzed and constructed. Such approximations are based on a Reduced Order Model,…
This paper presents the development and implementation of a Model Predictive Control (MPC) framework for trajectory tracking in autonomous vehicles under diverse driving conditions. The proposed approach incorporates a modular architecture…
In this paper, we present a data-driven framework for real-time estimation of reachable sets for control systems where the plant is modeled using neural networks (NNs). We utilize a running example of a quadrotor model that is learned using…
The Piecewise Constant Curvature (PCC) model is the most widely used soft robotic modeling and control. However, the PCC fails to accurately describe the deformation of the soft robots when executing dynamic tasks or interacting with the…
This paper presents a novel Nonlinear Model Predictive Control (NMPC) scheme for underwater robotic vehicles operating in a constrained workspace including static obstacles. The purpose of the controller is to guide the vehicle towards…
Model Predictive Control (MPC) is a well-established approach to solve infinite horizon optimal control problems. Since optimization over an infinite time horizon is generally infeasible, MPC determines a suboptimal feedback control by…
Fast and safe manipulation of flexible objects with a robot manipulator necessitates measures to cope with vibrations. Existing approaches either increase the task execution time or require complex models and/or additional instrumentation…
Correlated with the trend of increasing degrees of freedom in robotic systems is a similar trend of rising interest in Spatio-Temporal systems described by Partial Differential Equations (PDEs) among the robotics and control communities.…
Underactuated robots are characterized by a larger number of degrees of freedom than actuators and if they are designed with a specific mass distribution, they can be controlled by means of differential flatness theory. This structural…
The present work considers the optimal control of a convective Cahn-Hilliard system, where the control enters through the velocity in the transport term. We prove the existence of a solution to the considered optimal control problem. For an…
Multi-quadrotor systems face significant challenges in decentralized control, particularly with safety and coordination under sensing and communication limitations. State-of-the-art methods leverage Control Barrier Functions (CBFs) to…
Force modulation of robotic manipulators has been extensively studied for several decades. However, it is not yet commonly used in safety-critical applications due to a lack of accurate interaction contact modeling and weak performance…