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This paper presents the first steps toward a soft dolphin robot using a bio-inspired approach to mimic dolphin flexibility. The current dolphin robot uses a minimalist approach, with only two actuated cable-driven degrees of freedom…
In this paper, we present a full dynamical model of a four-winged micro ornithopter inspired by a dragonfly-type insect. The micro ornithopter is modeled as four articulated rigid body components (wings) connected to the main body via…
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…
Evolution and learning have historically been interrelated topics, and their interplay is attracting increased interest lately. The emerging new factor in this trend is morphological evolution, the evolution of physical forms within…
Flapping wing flight is a challenging dynamical problem and is also a very fascinating subject to study in the field of biomimetic robotics. A Bat, in particular, has a very articulated armwing mechanism with high degrees-of-freedom and…
This work briefly covers our efforts to stabilize the flight dynamics of Northeastern's tailless bat-inspired micro aerial vehicle, Aerobat. Flapping robots are not new. A plethora of examples is mainly dominated by insect-style design…
Robot designs can take many inspirations from nature, where there are many examples of highly resilient and fault-tolerant locomotion strategies to navigate complex terrains by using multi-functional appendages. For example, Chukar and…
Unmanned micro aerial vehicle research is an active area of development due to the vast potential applications. Prior work towards realizing flapping flight has achieved some success however they have relied heavily upon the use of rotary…
Drones have become essential in various applications, but conventional quadrotors face limitations in confined spaces and complex tasks. Deformable drones, which can adapt their shape in real-time, offer a promising solution to overcome…
This research proposes a novel morphing structure with shells inspired by the movement of pillbugs. Instead of the pillbug body, a loopcoupled mechanism based on slider-crank mechanisms is utilized to achieve the rolling up and spreading…
As drones are getting more and more entangled in our society, more untrained users require the capability to operate them. This scenario is to be achieved through the development of artificial intelligence capabilities assisting the human…
The aim of this article is the formulation of a switching model predictive control framework for the case of a foldable quadrotor with the ability to retain the overall control quality during online structural reformations. The majority of…
The ability to enter in contact with and manipulate physical objects with a flying robot enables many novel applications, such as contact inspection, painting, drilling, and sample collection. Generally, these aerial robots need more…
Insects control unsteady aerodynamic forces on flapping wings to navigate complex environments. While understanding these forces is vital for biology, physics, and engineering, existing evaluation methods face trade-offs: high-fidelity…
Quadrotors are highly nonlinear dynamical systems that require carefully tuned controllers to be pushed to their physical limits. Recently, learning-based control policies have been proposed for quadrotors, as they would potentially allow…
Dynamic control of a soft-body robot to deliver complex behaviors with low-dimensional actuation inputs is challenging. In this paper, we present a computational approach to automatically generate versatile, underactuated control policies…
The flexibility of biological propulsors such as wings and fins is believed to contribute to the higher performance of flying and swimming animals compared with their engineered peers. Flexibility seems to follow a universal design rule…
Flying vertebrates exhibit sophisticated wingbeat kinematics. Their specialized forelimbs allow for the wing morphing motion to couple with the flapping motion during their level flight, Previous flyable bionic platforms have successfully…
Realtime model learning proves challenging for complex dynamical systems, such as drones flying in variable wind conditions. Machine learning technique such as deep neural networks have high representation power but is often too slow to…
In this paper, we present a novel developmental reinforcement learning-based controller for a quadcopter with thrust vectoring capabilities. This multirotor UAV design has tilt-enabled rotors. It utilizes the rotor force magnitude and…