Related papers: Repeatable Energy-Efficient Perching for Flapping-…
Soft grippers are receiving growing attention due to their compliance-based interactive safety and dexterity. Hybrid gripper (soft actuators enhanced by rigid constraints) is a new trend in soft gripper design. With right structural…
Aerial grasping, particularly soft aerial grasping, holds significant promise for drone delivery and harvesting tasks. However, controlling UAV dynamics during aerial grasping presents considerable challenges. The increased mass during…
Monitoring large scale environments is a crucial task for managing remote alpine environments, especially for hazardous events such as avalanches. One key information for avalanche risk forecast is imagery of released avalanches. As these…
Aerial transportation requires a simple yet reliable gripper for picking and placing objects of interest. In this work, we design an aerial gripper for passive grasping and impulsive release of ferrous coated objects. Permanent magnets are…
Aerodynamic ground effect in flapping-wing insect flight is of importance to comparative morphologies and of interest to the micro-air-vehicle (MAV) community. Recent studies, however, show apparently contradictory results of either some…
Thermal soaring saves much energy, but flying large distances in this form represents a great challenge for birds, people and Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs). The solution is to make use of so-called thermals, which are localized, warmer…
Accurate estimation of aerodynamic forces is essential for advancing the control, modeling, and design of flapping-wing aerial robots with dynamic morphing capabilities. In this paper, we investigate two distinct methodologies for force…
The principal aim of this Master's thesis is to propel the optimization of the membrane wing structure of the Northeastern Aerobat through origami techniques and enhancing its capacity for secure hovering within confined spaces.…
Birds and bats are extremely adept flyers: whether in hunting prey, or evading predators, post-stall manoeuvrability is a characteristic of vital importance. Their performance, in this regard, greatly exceeds that of uncrewed aerial…
The exploration of asteroids and comets is important in the quest for the formation of the Solar System and it is an important step for human space travel. Moving on the surface of asteroids is challenging for future robotic explorers due…
While Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) are increasingly deployed in several missions, their inability of reliable and consistent autonomous landing poses a major setback for deploying such systems truly autonomously. In this paper we present…
This paper presents an aerial platform capable of performing physically interactive tasks in unstructured environments with human-like dexterity under human supervision. This aerial platform consists of a humanoid torso attached to a…
This paper presents an aerially deployable crawler designed for adaptive locomotion and manipulation within tree canopies. The system combines compliant microspine-based tracks, a dual-track rotary gripper, and an elastic tail, enabling…
This paper develops and compares two motion planning algorithms for a tethered UAV with and without the possibility of the tether contacting the confined and cluttered environment. Tethered aerial vehicles have been studied due to their…
The demining of landmines using drones is challenging; air-releasable payloads are typically non-intelligent (e.g., water balloons or explosives) and deploying them at even low altitudes (~6 meter) is inherently inaccurate due to complex…
Grasping a variety of objects remains a key challenge in the development of versatile robotic systems. The human hand is remarkably dexterous, capable of grasping and manipulating objects with diverse shapes, mechanical properties, and…
In this paper, we take an initial and novel step toward characterizing the physics of the hovering phenomenon in flapping insects and hummingbirds as a new class of extremum seeking (ES) feedback systems. By characterizing hovering flight…
We propose a novel tri-fingered soft robotic gripper with decoupled stiffness and shape control capability for performing adaptive grasping with minimum system complexity. The proposed soft fingers adaptively conform to object shapes…
Recently, suction-based robotic systems with microscopic features or active suction components have been proposed to grip rough and irregular surfaces. However, sophisticated fabrication methods or complex control systems are required for…
Sliding tasks performed by aerial robots are valuable for inspection and simple maintenance tasks at height, such as non-destructive testing and painting. Although various end-effector designs have been used for such tasks, non-actuated…