Related papers: Morphology and Behavior Co-Optimization of Modular…
Modular reconfigurable manipulators enable quick adaptation and versatility to address different application environments and tailor to the specific requirements of the tasks. Task performance significantly depends on the manipulator's…
This paper presents a novel approach for robust periodic attitude control of satellites. Respecting the periodicity of the satellite dynamics in the synthesis allows to achieve constant performance and robustness requirements over the…
This work investigates the impact of position and attitude perturbations on the beamforming performance of multi-satellite systems. The system under analysis is a formation of small satellites equipped with direct radiating arrays that…
Soft robotics is a rapidly growing area of robotics research that would benefit greatly from design automation, given the challenges of manually engineering complex, compliant, and generally non-intuitive robot body plans and behaviors. It…
Evolution sculpts both the body plans and nervous systems of agents together over time. In contrast, in AI and robotics, a robot's body plan is usually designed by hand, and control policies are then optimized for that fixed design. The…
The design and control of winged aircraft and drones is an iterative process aimed at identifying a compromise of mission-specific costs and constraints. When agility is required, shape-shifting (morphing) drones represent an efficient…
This paper presents a method for guiding a robot manipulator to capture and bring a tumbling satellite to a state of rest. The proposed approach includes developing a coordination control for the combined system of the space robot and the…
Agile earth observation satellites employ multiple actuators to enable flexible and responsive imaging capabilities. While significant advancements in actuator technology have enhanced satellites' torque and momentum, relatively little…
Uncertainties in contact dynamics and object geometry remain significant barriers to robust robotic manipulation. Caging mitigates these uncertainties by constraining an object's mobility without requiring precise contact modeling. However,…
Autonomy is a key challenge for future space exploration endeavours. Deep Reinforcement Learning holds the promises for developing agents able to learn complex behaviours simply by interacting with their environment. This paper investigates…
Evolving virtual creatures is a field with a rich history and recently it has been getting more attention, especially in the soft robotics domain. The compliance of soft materials endows soft robots with complex behavior, but it also makes…
Although robotic manipulators are used in an ever-growing range of applications, robot manufacturers typically follow a ``one-fits-all'' philosophy, employing identical manipulators in various settings. This often leads to suboptimal…
The co-adaptation of robots has been a long-standing research endeavour with the goal of adapting both body and behaviour of a system for a given task, inspired by the natural evolution of animals. Co-adaptation has the potential to…
An efficient and accurate computational approach is proposed for optimal attitude control of a rigid body. The problem is formulated directly as a discrete time optimization problem using a Lie group variational integrator. Discrete…
The general objective of this Ph.D. thesis is to study the dynamics and control of rigid and flexible spacecraft supported by a high-fidelity numerical simulation environment. The demand for greater attitude pointing precision, attitude…
Agile attitude maneuvering maximizes the utility of remote sensing satellite constellations. By taking into account a satellite's physical properties and its actuator specifications, we may leverage the full performance potential of the…
Morphology-control co-design concerns the coupled optimization of an agent's body structure and control policy. This problem exhibits a bi-level structure, where the control dynamically adapts to the morphology to maximize performance.…
A solar sail is one of the most promising space exploration system because of its theoretically infinite specific impulse using solar radiation pressure (SRP). Recently, some researchers proposed "transformable spacecrafts" that can…
In Evolutionary Robotics, evolutionary algorithms are used to co-optimize morphology and control. However, co-optimizing leads to different challenges: How do you optimize a controller for a body that often changes its number of inputs and…
This study presents autonomous guidance and control strategies for the purpose of reconfiguring close-range multi-satellite formations. The formation under consideration includes $N$ under-actuated deputy satellites and an uncontrolled…