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The navigation systems of autonomous aircraft rely on the readings provided by a suite of onboard sensors to estimate the aircraft state. In the case of fixed wing vehicles, the sensor suite is composed by triads of accelerometers,…
There is still a long way to go before artificial mini robots are really used for search and rescue missions in disaster-hit areas due to hindrance in power consumption, computation load of the locomotion, and obstacle-avoidance system.…
Flapping-Wing Micro Aerial Vehicles (FWMAVs) provide exceptional maneuverability and aerodynamic efficiency but pose significant challenges for onboard control due to nonlinear dynamics and stringent Size, Weight, and Power (SWaP)…
Drones operating in complex environments face a significant threat from thin obstacles, such as steel wires and kite strings at the submillimeter level, which are notoriously difficult for conventional sensors like RGB cameras, LiDAR, and…
Natural selection has tuned many flying and swimming animals across different species to share the same narrow design space for optimal high-efficient and energy-saving locomotion, e.g., their dimensionless Strouhal numbers St that relate…
Lightweight aerial swarms have potential applications in scenarios where larger drones fail to operate efficiently. The primary foundation for lightweight aerial swarms is efficient relative localization, which enables cooperation and…
This paper introduces the Minimal Biorobotic Stealth Distance (MBSD), a novel quantitative metric to evaluate the bionic resemblance of biorobotic aircraft. Current technological limitations prevent dragonfly-inspired aircrafts from…
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…
Perception systems for ornithopters face severe challenges. The harsh vibrations and abrupt movements caused during flapping are prone to produce motion blur and strong lighting condition changes. Their strict restrictions in weight, size,…
This work presents FlyHaptics, an aerial haptic interface tracked via a Vicon optical motion capture system and built around six five-bar linkage assemblies enclosed in a lightweight protective cage. We predefined five static tactile…
Small Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) exhibit immense potential for navigating indoor and hard-to-reach areas, yet their significant constraints in payload and autonomy have largely prevented their use for complex tasks like high-quality…
Intelligent edge vision tasks encounter the critical challenge of ensuring power and latency efficiency due to the typically heavy computational load they impose on edge platforms.This work leverages one of the first "AI in sensor" vision…
Nano quadcopters are small, agile, and cheap platforms that are well suited for deployment in narrow, cluttered environments. Due to their limited payload, these vehicles are highly constrained in processing power, rendering conventional…
Thanks to their compliance and adaptability, soft robots can be deployed to perform tasks in constrained or complex environments. In these scenarios, spatial awareness of the surroundings and the ability to localize the robot within the…
Tracking motions of humans or objects in the surroundings of the robot is essential to improve safe robot motions and reactions. In this work, we present an approach for scene flow estimation from low-density and noisy point clouds acquired…
Inertial sensors based on cold atom interferometry exhibit many interesting features for applications related to inertial navigation, particularly in terms of sensitivity and long-term stability. However, at present the typical atom…
It's a practical approach using the ground-aerial collaborative system to enhance the localization robustness of flying robots in cluttered environments, especially when visual sensors degrade. Conventional approaches estimate the flying…
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…
For several tasks, ranging from manipulation to inspection, it is beneficial for robots to localize a target object in their surroundings. In this paper, we propose an approach that utilizes coarse point clouds obtained from miniaturized…
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…