Related papers: A highly maneuverable flying squirrel drone with a…

A hover-capable insect-inspired flying robot that can remain long in the air has shown its potential use for both confined indoor and outdoor applications to complete assigned tasks. In this letter, we report improvements in the flight…

Due to the limitation of the drone's load capacity, various specific tasks need to be accomplished by multiple drones in collaboration. In some transportation tasks, two drones are required to lift the load together, which brings even more…

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…

First-person view drone racing has become a popular televised sport. However, very little is known about the perceptual and motor skills of professional drone racing pilots. A better understanding of these skills may inform path planning…

Whether for their maneuverability, autonomy or ergonomics, convertible UAVs, meaning those with the ability to take off or land vertically and fly like an airplane, present many interests. However, their dynamics are complicated by various…

Most aerial manipulators use serial rigid-link designs, which results in large forces when initiating contacts during manipulation and could cause flight stability difficulty. This limitation could potentially be improved by the compliance…

Learning to control robots without requiring engineered models has been a long-term goal, promising diverse and novel applications. Yet, reinforcement learning has only achieved limited impact on real-time robot control due to its high…

Micro aerial vehicles are making a large impact in applications such as search-and-rescue, package delivery, and recreation. Unfortunately, these diminutive drones are currently constrained to carrying small payloads, in large part because…

The design of a prototype to carry out take-off and flight tests with tethered aircrafts is presented. The system features a ground station equipped with a winch and a linear motion system. The motion of these two components is regulated by…

A drone monitoring system that integrates deep-learning-based detection and tracking modules is proposed in this work. The biggest challenge in adopting deep learning methods for drone detection is the limited amount of training drone…

Most reinforcement learning(RL)-based methods for drone racing target fixed, obstacle-free tracks, leaving the generalization to unknown, cluttered environments largely unaddressed. This challenge stems from the need to balance racing speed…

This work addresses the problem of robust attitude control of quadcopters. First, the mathematical model of the quadcopter is derived considering factors such as nonlinearity, external disturbances, uncertain dynamics and strong coupling.…

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…

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…

Aerial robots are a well-established solution for exploration, monitoring, and inspection, thanks to their superior maneuverability and agility. However, in many environments, they risk crashing and sustaining damage after collisions.…

An aerial vehicle powered by flapping feathered wings was designed, developed and fabricated. Different from legacy flapping-wing aerial vehicles with membrane wings, the new design uses authentic bird feathers to fabricate wings. In field…

Airborne Wind Energy is a lightweight technology that allows power extraction from the wind using airborne devices such as kites and gliders, where the airfoil orientation can be dynamically controlled in order to maximize performance. The…

Autonomous drone racing has gained attention for its potential to push the boundaries of drone navigation technologies. While much of the existing research focuses on racing in obstacle-free environments, few studies have addressed the…

This paper proposes a nonlinear control architecture for flexible aircraft simultaneous trajectory tracking and load alleviation. By exploiting the control redundancy, the gust and maneuver loads are alleviated without degrading the…

Combining an energy-efficient drone with a high-capacity truck for last-mile package delivery can benefit operators and customers by reducing delivery times and environmental impact. However, directly integrating drone flight dynamics into…