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When working alongside human collaborators in dynamic and unstructured environments, such as disaster recovery or military operation, fast field adaptation is necessary for an unmanned ground vehicle (UGV) to perform its duties or learn…

Groups of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are increasingly utilized in transportation task as the combined strength allows to increase the maximum payload. However, the resulting mechanical coupling of the UAVs impose new challenges in…

Insects and hummingbirds exhibit extraordinary flight capabilities and can simultaneously master seemingly conflicting goals: stable hovering and aggressive maneuvering, unmatched by small scale man-made vehicles. Flapping Wing Micro Air…

Manipulation and grasping with unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) currently require accurate positioning and are often executed at reduced speed to ensure successful grasps. This is due to the fact that typical UAVs can only accommodate rigid…

In this paper, we address the problem of stable coordinated motion in multi-robot systems with limited fields of view (FOVs). These problems arise naturally for multi-robot systems that interact based on sensing, such as our case study of…

In this study, a novel technique for the autonomous visual inspection of rotating wind turbine rotor blades utilizing an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) was developed. This approach addresses the challenges presented by the dynamic…

This dissertation presents nonlinear tracking control systems for quadrotor unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) under the influence of uncertainties. Assuming that there exist unstructured disturbances in the translational dynamics and the…

We present a complete infrastructure-less magneto-inductive (MI) localization system enabling a lightweight UAV to autonomously hover, track, and land with centimeter precision on a mobile quadruped robot acting as a dynamic docking pad.…

Cellular-connected UAV systems have enabled a wide range of low-altitude aerial services. However, these systems still face many challenges, such as frequent handovers and the inefficiency of traditional transport protocols. To better study…

Dynamic soaring is a flying technique to exploit the energy available in wind shear layers, enabling potentially unlimited flight without the need for internal energy sources. We propose a framework for autonomous dynamic soaring with a…

This paper studies the improvement of the achievable end-to-end data rate of ground users assisted with unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and tethered balloons (TBs). The goal is to maximize the end-to-end throughput of a network suffering…

Enabling vertical take-off and landing while providing the ability to fly long ranges opens the door to a wide range of new real-world aircraft applications while improving many existing tasks. Tiltrotor vertical take-off and landing (VTOL)…

We propose the intermittently tethered unmanned aerial vehicle (iTUAV) as a tradeoff between the power availability of a tethered UAV (TUAV) and the flexibility of an untethered UAV. An iTUAV can provide cellular connectivity while being…

Abstract. Fixed wing and multirotor UAVs are common in the field of robotics. Solutions for simulation and control of these vehicles are ubiquitous. This is not the case for airships, a simulation of which needs to address unique…

We propose a mechanically simple and cheap design for a series elastic actuator with controllable stiffness. Such characteristics are necessary for animals for running, jumping, throwing, and manipulation, yet in robots, variable stiffness…

Current UAVs capable of perching require added structure and mechanisms to accomplish this. These take the form of hooks, claws, needles, etc which add weight and usually drag. We propose in this paper the dual use of structures already on…

Soft-growing robots (i.e., vine robots) are a promising class of soft robots that allow for navigation and growth in tightly confined environments. However, these robots remain challenging to model and control due to the complex interplay…

This work addresses the problem of path tracking control of a suspended load using a tilt-rotor UAV. The main challenge in controlling this kind of system arises from the dynamic behavior imposed by the load, which is usually coupled to the…

Energy-sharing UAV-UGV systems extend the endurance of Uncrewed Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) by leveraging Uncrewed Ground Vehicles (UGVs) as mobile charging stations, enabling persistent autonomy in infrastructure-sparse environments. Trajectory…

Unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) assisted cellular communication is gaining significant interest recently. Although it offers several advantages over terrestrial communication, UAV communication suffers from two main shortcomings. The typical…