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Inspired by the wake-surfing nature of animals, this study aims to understand the aerodynamic force variation on a wing surfing in an unsteady 2-D wake. Wind tunnel experiments were conducted using Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV) and force…
Galloping is a common high-speed gait in both animals and quadrupedal robots, yet its energetic characteristics remain insufficiently explored. This study systematically analyzes a large number of possible galloping gaits by categorizing…
Soft machines typically exhibit slow locomotion speed and low manipulation strength because of intrinsic limitations of soft materials. Here, we present a generic design principle that harnesses mechanical instability for a variety of…
Quadruped robots are machines intended for challenging and harsh environments. Despite the progress in locomotion strategy, safely recovering from unexpected falls or planned drops is still an open problem. It is further made more difficult…
Robots can acquire complex manipulation skills by learning policies from expert demonstrations, which is often known as vision-based imitation learning. Generating policies based on diffusion and flow matching models has been shown to be…
The natural wind environment that volant insects encounter is unsteady and highly complex, posing significant flight control and stability challenges. Unsteady airflows can range from structured chains of discrete vortices shed in the wake…
While the animals' Fin-to-Limb evolution has been well-researched in biology, such morphological transformation remains under-adopted in the modern design of advanced robotic limbs. This paper investigates a novel class of overconstrained…
Overactuated tilt-rotor platforms offer many advantages over traditional fixed-arm drones, allowing the decoupling of the applied force from the attitude of the robot. This expands their application areas to aerial interaction and…
Road vehicles contribute to significant levels of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. A potential strategy for improving their aerodynamic efficiency and reducing emissions is through active adaptation of their exterior shapes to the…
We designed and built a three degrees-of-freedom (DOF) flapping wing robot, Flapperoo, to study the aerodynamic benefits of wing folding and twisting. Forces and moments of this physical model are measured in wind tunnel tests over a…
Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are finding use in applications that place increasing emphasis on robustness to external disturbances including extreme wind. However, traditional multirotor UAV platforms do not directly sense wind;…
We present a data-driven feedforward control to attenuate large transient lift experienced by an airfoil disturbed by an extreme level of discrete vortex gust. The current analysis uses a nonlinear machine-learning technique to compress the…
This paper presents a novel model of large-size tilt-rotor aircraft, which can operate as a helicopter as well as being capable of transition to fixed-wing flight. Aerodynamics of the dynamic large-size tilt-rotors based on blade element…
Legged robots offer several advantages when navigating unstructured environments, but they often fall short of the efficiency achieved by wheeled robots. One promising strategy to improve their energy economy is to leverage their natural…
Perching with winged Unmanned Aerial Vehicles has often been solved by means of complex control or intricate appendages. Here, we present a simple yet novel method that relies on passive wing morphing for crash-landing on trees and other…
Multimodal locomotion capability is an emerging topic in robotics field, and various novel mobile robots have been developed to enable the maneuvering in both terrestrial and aerial domains. Among these hybrid robots, several…
The development of novel autonomous underwater gliders has been hindered by limited shape diversity, primarily due to the reliance on traditional design tools that depend heavily on manual trial and error. Building an automated design…
One of the most challenging tasks for a flying robot is to autonomously navigate between target locations quickly and reliably while avoiding obstacles in its path, and with little to no a-priori knowledge of the operating environment. This…
The control design of an airborne wind energy system with rigid aircraft, vertical take-off and landing, and pumping operation is described. A hierarchical control structure is implemented, in order to address all operational phases:…
Biological flapping wing fliers operate efficiently and robustly in a wide range of flight conditions and are a great source of inspiration to engineers. The unsteady aerodynamics of flapping-wings are dominated by large-scale vortical…