Related papers: Repeatable Energy-Efficient Perching for Flapping-…
This work introduces TRIGGER, the first lighTweight univeRsal jammInG Gripper for aErial gRasping. TRIGGER is an omnidirectional, landing-capable aerial grasping system with resilience and robustness to collisions and inherent passive…
The flight characteristics of bats remarkably have been overlooked in aerial drone designs. Unlike other animals, bats leverage the manipulation of inertial dynamics to exhibit aerial flip turns when they perch. Inspired by this unique…
Sub-gram flapping-wing flying insect robots (FIRs) are challenging to model because of mechanical complexity in their wings, unsteady aerodynamic flow, and the difficulty of making precise measurements at a small scale. Coupling effects…
In this paper, we introduce advances in the sensor suite of an autonomous flying insect robot (FIR) weighing less than a gram. FIRs, because of their small weight and size, offer unparalleled advantages in terms of material cost and…
The design of a prototype to carry out take-off and flight tests with tethered aircrafts is presented. The system features a ground station equipped with a winch and a linear motion system. The motion of these two components is regulated by…
Assistive free-flying robots are a promising platform for supporting and working alongside astronauts in carrying out tasks that require interaction with the environment. However, current free-flying robot platforms are limited by existing…
Soft pneumatic gripping strategies are often based on pressurized actuation of structures made of soft elastomeric materials, which limits designs in terms of size, weight, achievable forces, and ease of fabrication. On the other hand,…
One of the trendsetting themes in soft robotics has been the goal of developing the ultimate universal soft robotic gripper. One that is capable of manipulating items of various shapes, sizes, thicknesses, textures, and weights. All the…
Achieving both agile maneuverability and high energy efficiency in aerial robots, particularly in dynamic wind environments, remains challenging. Conventional thruster-powered systems offer agility but suffer from high energy consumption,…
Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) are increasingly used to enable wireless communications. Due to their characteristics, such as the ability to hover and carry cargo, UAVs can serve as communications nodes, including Wi-Fi Access Points and…
This paper introduces a novel, small form-factor, aerial vehicle research platform for agile object detection, classification, tracking, and interaction tasks. General-purpose hardware components were designed to augment a given aerial…
Grasping is an essential capability for most robots in practical applications. Soft robotic grippers are considered as a critical part of robotic grasping and have attracted considerable attention in terms of the advantages of the high…
Fixed-wing unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) offer endurance and efficiency but lack low-speed agility due to highly coupled dynamics. We present an end-to-end sensing-to-control pipeline that combines bio-inspired hardware, physics-informed…
Bird-sized flapping-wing robots offer significant potential for agile flight in complex environments, but achieving agile and robust trajectory tracking remains a challenge due to the complex aerodynamics and highly nonlinear dynamics…
Autonomous delivery of goods using a MAV is a difficult problem, as it poses high demand on the MAV's control, perception and manipulation capabilities. This problem is especially challenging if the exact shape, location and configuration…
Over the past decades, quadcopters have been investigated, due to their mobility and flexibility to operate in a wide range of environments. They have been used in various areas, including surveillance and monitoring. During a mission,…
Autonomous flapping-wing micro-aerial vehicles (FWMAV) have a host of potential applications such as environmental monitoring, artificial pollination, and search and rescue operations. One of the challenges for achieving these applications…
In systems control, the dynamics of a system are governed by modulating its inputs to achieve a desired outcome. For example, to control the thrust of a quad-copter propeller the controller modulates its rotation rate, relying on a…
Flying manipulators are aerial drones with attached rigid-bodied robotic arms and belong to the latest and most actively developed research areas in robotics. The rigid nature of these arms often lack compliance, flexibility, and smoothness…
Fluidic locomotion of flapping Micro Aerial Vehicles (MAVs) can be very complex, particularly when the rules from insect flight dynamics (fast flapping dynamics and light wings) are not applicable. In these situations, widely used averaging…