Related papers: Flying in air ducts
There has been a rapid growth in the deployment of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) in various applications ranging from vital safety-of-life such as surveillance and reconnaissance at nuclear power plants to entertainment and hobby…
Micro aerial vehicles are becoming increasingly important in search and rescue operations due to their agility, speed, and ability to access confined spaces or hazardous areas. However, designing lightweight aerial systems presents…
Being motivated by ceiling inspection applications via unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) which require close proximity flight to surfaces, a systematic control approach enabling safe and accurate close proximity flight is proposed in this…
Drones can inspect overhead power lines while they remain energized, significantly simplifying the inspection process. However, localizing a drone relative to all conductors using an onboard LiDAR sensor presents several challenges: (1)…
The unmanned air-vehicle (UAV) or mini-drones equipped with sensors are becoming increasingly popular for various commercial, industrial, and public-safety applications. However, drones with uncontrolled deployment poses challenges for…
Multirotors can be effectively applied to various tasks, such as transportation, investigation, exploration, and lifesaving, depending on the type of payload. However, due to the nature of multirotors, the payload loaded on the multirotor…
The rapid deployment of drones poses significant challenges for airspace management, security, and surveillance. Current detection and classification technologies, including cameras, LiDAR, and conventional radar systems, often struggle to…
Small drones are an increasing threat to both military personnel and civilian infrastructure, making early and automated detection crucial. In this work we develop a system that uses spiking neural networks and neuromorphic cameras (event…
High speed navigation through unknown environments is a challenging problem in robotics. It requires fast computation and tight integration of all the subsystems on the robot such that the latency in the perception-action loop is as small…
Typical drones with multi rotors are generally less maneuverable due to unidirectional thrust, which may be unfavorable to agile flight in very narrow and confined spaces. This paper suggests a new bio-inspired drone that is empowered with…
In this paper, we develop a position estimation system for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles formed by hardware and software. It is based on low-cost devices: GPS, commercial autopilot sensors and dense optical flow algorithm implemented in an…
This paper proposes an adaptive near-hover position controller for quadcopters, which can be deployed to quadcopters of very different mass, size and motor constants, and also shows rapid adaptation to unknown disturbances during runtime.…
In this paper, we investigate the problem of enabling a drone to fly through a tilted narrow gap, without a traditional planning and control pipeline. To this end, we propose an end-to-end policy network, which imitates from the traditional…
Nano-size drones hold enormous potential to explore unknown and complex environments. Their small size makes them agile and safe for operation close to humans and allows them to navigate through narrow spaces. However, their tiny size and…
Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are finding use in applications that place increasing emphasis on robustness to external disturbances including extreme wind. However, traditional multirotor UAV platforms do not directly sense wind;…
As airborne vehicles are becoming more autonomous and ubiquitous, it has become vital to develop the capability to detect the objects in their surroundings. This paper attempts to address the problem of drones detection from other flying…
Modular Aerial Robot Systems (MARS) comprise multiple drone units with reconfigurable connected formations, providing high adaptability to diverse mission scenarios, fault conditions, and payload capacities. However, existing control…
Autonomous agile flight brings up fundamental challenges in robotics, such as coping with unreliable state estimation, reacting optimally to dynamically changing environments, and coupling perception and action in real time under severe…
The use of amateur drones (ADrs) is expected to significantly increase over the upcoming years. However, regulations do not allow such drones to fly over all areas, in addition to typical altitude limitations. As a result, there is an…
The rapid rise of accessibility of unmanned aerial vehicles or drones pose a threat to general security and confidentiality. Most of the commercially available or custom-built drones are multi-rotors and are comprised of multiple…