Related papers: Repeatable Energy-Efficient Perching for Flapping-…
Perching is a promising solution for a small unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) to save energy and extend operation time. This paper proposes a quadrotor that can perch on planar structures using the ceiling effect. Compared with the existing…
Flapping-wing insects, birds, and robots are thought to offset the high power cost of oscillatory wing motion by using elastic elements for energy storage and return. Insects possess highly resilient elastic regions in their flight anatomy…
Aerial robots the size of a honeybee (~100 mg) have advantages over larger robots because of their small size, low mass and low materials cost. Previous iterations have demonstrated controlled flight but were difficult to fabricate because…
We discuss the problem of designing and implementing controllers for insect-scale flapping-wing micro air vehicles (FWMAVs), from a unifying perspective and employing two different experimental platforms; namely, a Harvard RoboBee-like…
Aerial robots show significant potential for forest canopy research and environmental monitoring by providing data collection capabilities at high spatial and temporal resolutions. However, limited flight endurance hinders their…
Flapping wings enable flying animals and biomimetic robots to generate elevated aerodynamic forces. Measurements that demonstrate this capability are based on tethered experiments with robots and animals, and indirect force calculations…
The design of localization systems for small-scale flapping-wing aerial robots faces relevant challenges caused by the limited payload and onboard computational resources. This paper presents an ultra-wideband localization system…
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…
Autonomous Micro Aerial Vehicles are deployed for a variety tasks including surveillance and monitoring. Perching and staring allow the vehicle to monitor targets without flying, saving battery power and increasing the overall mission time…
The development of automatic perception systems and techniques for bio-inspired flapping-wing robots is severely hampered by the high technical complexity of these platforms and the installation of onboard sensors and electronics. Besides,…
Perching with winged Unmanned Aerial Vehicles has often been solved by means of complex control or intricate appendages. Here, we present a simple yet novel method that relies on passive wing morphing for crash-landing on trees and other…
Saving energy and enhancing performance are secular preoccupations shared by both nature and human beings. In animal locomotion, flapping flyers or swimmers rely on the flexibility of their wings or body to passively increase their…
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…
Rapid and versatile object manipulation in air is an open challenge. An energy-efficient and adaptive soft gripper combined with an agile aerial vehicle could revolutionize aerial robotic manipulation in areas such as warehousing. This…
The techniques of precision agriculture include the possibility to execute crop monitoring tasks through the application of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs). These platforms are flexible, easy to use and low-cost, and they are the best…
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…
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…
Lighter-than-air vehicles or blimps, are an evolving platform in robotics with several beneficial properties such as energy efficiency, collision resistance, and ability to work in close proximity to human users. While existing blimp…
Perching on structures such as trees, beams, and ledges is essential for extending the endurance of aerial robots by enabling energy conservation in standby or observation modes. A tethered tensile perching mechanism offers a simple,…
This paper presents a novel learning-based approach for online state estimation in flapping wing aerial vehicles (FWAVs). Leveraging low-cost Magnetic, Angular Rate, and Gravity (MARG) sensors, the proposed method effectively mitigates the…