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This paper studies the motion planning problem of the pick-and-place of an aerial manipulator that consists of a quadcopter flying base and a Delta arm. We propose a novel partially decoupled motion planning framework to solve this problem.…
To participate in the Outback Medical Express UAV Challenge 2016, a vehicle was designed and tested that can hover precisely, take-off and land vertically, fly fast forward efficiently and use computer vision to locate a person and a…
Floating-base multi-link robots can change their shape during flight, making them well-suited for applications in confined environments such as autonomous inspection and search and rescue. However, trajectory planning for such systems…
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…
Manoeuvring untethered, centimetre-scale airborne structures has been a long-standing challenge. Active flight systems, relying on high-power-density actuators alongside mechanical and electronic components, are constrained by critical…
The task of flying in tight formations is challenging for teams of quadrotors because the complex aerodynamic wake interactions can destabilize individual team members as well as the team. Furthermore, these aerodynamic effects are highly…
This paper introduces the Omnidirectional Tractable Three Module Robot for traversing inside complex pipe networks. The robot consists of three omnidirectional modules fixed 120{\deg} apart circumferentially which can rotate about their…
Although robotic manipulators are used in an ever-growing range of applications, robot manufacturers typically follow a ``one-fits-all'' philosophy, employing identical manipulators in various settings. This often leads to suboptimal…
In this work we present the optimization-based design and control of a fully-actuated omnidirectional hexarotor. The tilt angles of the propellers are designed by maximizing the control wrench applied by the propellers. This maximizes (a)…
We investigate the superintegrability of rigid body rotors coupled to planar systems. In particular, we study the isotropic harmonic oscillator in two dimensions, with its (central) force acting on the rotor's center of mass constrained to…
Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have various advantages, but their practical applications are influenced by their limited energy. Therefore, it is important to manage their power consumption and also important to establish corresponding…
Differential flatness has been used to provide diffeomorphic transformations for non-linear dynamics to become a linear controllable system. This greatly simplifies the control synthesis since in the flat output space, the dynamics appear…
With the development of autonomous driving, it is becoming increasingly common for autonomous vehicles (AVs) and human-driven vehicles (HVs) to travel on the same roads. Existing single-vehicle planning algorithms on board struggle to…
We develop an automated computational modeling framework for rapid gradient-based design of multistable soft mechanical structures composed of non-identical bistable unit cells with appropriate geometric parameterization. This framework…
The purpose of this paper is to provide a construction to model shared-variable systems using higher-dimensional automata which is compositional in the sense that the parallel composition of completely independent systems is modeled by the…
A novel motion control system for Compliant Framed wheeled Modular Mobile Robots (CFMMR) is studied in this paper. This type of wheeled mobile robot uses rigid axles coupled by compliant frame modules to provide both full suspension and…
Collision-resilient quadrotors have gained significant attention given their potential for operating in cluttered environments and leveraging impacts to perform agile maneuvers. However, existing designs are typically single-mode: either…
Reliable midair docking between small unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) is essential for modular aerial cooperation and manipulation, but it requires precise relative-pose control and repeatable platform under tight thrust and payload…
MOMAV (Marco's Omnidirectional Micro Aerial Vehicle) is a multirotor drone that is fully actuated, meaning it can control its orientation independently of its position. MOMAV is also highly symmetrical, making its flight efficiency largely…
This workshop paper presents the challenges we encountered when simulating fully-actuated Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) for our research and the solutions we developed to overcome the challenges. We describe the ARCAD simulator that has…