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Over the last decade, the use of autonomous drone systems for surveying, search and rescue, or last-mile delivery has increased exponentially. With the rise of these applications comes the need for highly robust, safety-critical algorithms…

Rapidly generating an optimal chasing motion of a drone to follow a dynamic target among obstacles is challenging due to numerical issues rising from multiple conflicting objectives and non-convex constraints. This study proposes to resolve…

Contrary to the stunning feats observed in birds of prey, aerial manipulation and grasping with flying robots still lack versatility and agility. Conventional approaches using rigid manipulators require precise positioning and are subject…

We present a steady jet flow-based flow control of flexible membrane wings for an adaptive and efficient motion of bat-inspired drones in complex flight environments. A body-fitted variational computational aeroelastic framework is adopted…

The endurance and energy efficiency of drones remain critical challenges in their design and operation. To extend mission duration, numerous studies explored perching mechanisms that enable drones to conserve energy by temporarily…

In an era of rapid urbanization and e-commerce growth, efficient parcel delivery methods are crucial. This paper presents a detailed study of the aerodynamics and sensing analysis of drones for parcel delivery. Utilizing Computational Fluid…

We investigate the effect of wing twist flexibility on lift and efficiency of a flapping-wing micro air vehicle capable of liftoff. Wings used previously were chosen to be fully rigid due to modeling and fabrication constraints. However,…

Achieving both agile maneuverability and high energy efficiency in aerial robots, particularly in dynamic wind environments, remains challenging. Conventional thruster-powered systems offer agility but suffer from high energy consumption,…

Flying animals resort to fast, large-degree-of-freedom motion of flapping wings, a key feature that distinguishes them from rotary or fixed-winged robotic fliers with limited motion of aerodynamic surfaces. However, flapping-wing…

Flying insects can perform rapid, sophisticated maneuvers like backflips, sharp banked turns, and in-flight collision recovery. To emulate these in aerial robots weighing less than a gram, known as flying insect robots (FIRs), a fast and…

Aerial manipulators, composed of multirotors and robotic arms, have a structure and function highly reminiscent of avian species. This paper studies the tracking control problem for aerial manipulators. This paper studies the tracking…

Aerial robots are evolving from avoiding obstacles to exploiting the environmental contact interactions for navigation, exploration and manipulation. A key challenge in such aerial physical interactions lies in handling uncertain contact…

In the field of fixed wing aircraft, many morphing technologies have been applied to the wing, such as adaptive airfoil, variable span aircraft, variable swept angle aircraft, etc., but few are aimed at the tail. The traditional fixed wing…

Tailsitter aircraft attract considerable interest due to their capabilities of both agile hover and high speed forward flight. However, traditional tailsitters that use aerodynamic control surfaces face the challenge of limited control…

This paper presents a data-driven optimal control policy for a micro flapping wing unmanned aerial vehicle. First, a set of optimal trajectories are computed off-line based on a geometric formulation of dynamics that captures the nonlinear…

There is a growing need for vertical take-off and landing vehicles, including drones, which are safe to use and can adapt to collisions. The risks of damage by collision, to humans, obstacles in the environment, and drones themselves, are…

Natural flyers use soft wings to seamlessly enable a wide range of flight behaviours, including agile manoeuvres, squeezing through narrow passageways, and withstanding collisions. In contrast, conventional quadrotor designs rely on rigid…

Navigation precision, speed and stability are crucial for safe Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) flight maneuvers and effective flight mission executions in dynamic environments. Different flight missions may have varying objectives, such as…

Autonomous drone racing has risen as a challenging robotic benchmark for testing the limits of learning, perception, planning, and control. Expert human pilots are able to fly a drone through a race track by mapping pixels from a single…

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…