Related papers: Wake Vectoring for Efficient Morphing Flight

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…

Flying animals, such as bats, fly through their fluidic environment as they create air jets and form wake structures downstream of their flight path. Bats, in particular, dynamically morph their highly flexible and dexterous armwing to…

Omnidirectional aerial vehicles (OMAVs) have opened up a wide range of possibilities for inspection, navigation, and manipulation applications using drones. In this paper, we introduce MorphEUS, a morphable co-axial quadrotor that can…

Falling cat problem is well-known where cats show their super aerial reorientation capability and can land safely. For their robotic counterparts, a similar falling quadruped robot problem, has not been fully addressed, although achieving…

Internal computational models of physical bodies are fundamental to the ability of robots and animals alike to plan and control their actions. These "self-models" allow robots to consider outcomes of multiple possible future actions,…

There is a growing need for uncrewed aerial vehicles (UAVs) to operate in cities. However, the uneven urban landscape and complex street systems cause large-scale wind gusts that challenge the safe and effective operation of UAVs. Current…

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…

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…

Tilt-rotor aerial robots are more dynamic and versatile than fixed-rotor platforms, since the thrust vector and body orientation are decoupled. However, the coordination of servos and propellers (the allocation problem) is not trivial,…

Autonomous Unmanned Aerial Manipulators (UAMs) have shown promising potentials to transform passive sensing missions into active 3-dimension interactive missions, but they still suffer from some difficulties impeding their wide…

The 3D flight control of a flapping wing robot is a very challenging problem. The robot stabilizes and controls its pose through the aerodynamic forces acting on the wing membrane which has complex dynamics and it is difficult to develop a…

This paper introduces a novel compliant mechanism combining lightweight and energy dissipation for aerial physical interaction. Weighting 400~g at take-off, the mechanism is actuated in the forward body direction, enabling precise position…

Aquatic creatures exhibit remarkable adaptations of their body to efficiently interact with the surrounding fluid. The tight coupling between their morphology, motion, and the environment are highly complex but serves as a valuable example…

Stop-rotor aircraft have long been proposed as the ideal vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) aircraft for missions with equal time spent in both flight regimes, such as agricultural monitoring, search and rescue, and last-mile delivery.…

Evolutionary algorithms offer great promise for the automatic design of robot bodies, tailoring them to specific environments or tasks. Most research is done on simplified models or virtual robots in physics simulators, which do not capture…

This paper presents a novel VTOL UAV that owns a link connecting four rotors and a fuselage by a passive joint, allowing the control of the rotor's tilting angle by adjusting the rotors' thrust. This unique structure contributes to…

This paper discusses developments for a multi-limb morphogenetic UAV, MorphoGear, that is capable of both aerial flight and ground locomotion. A hybrid path planning algorithm based on the A* strategy has been developed, enabling seamless…

Morphology of a robot design is important to its ability to achieve a stated goal and therefore applying machine learning approaches that incorporate morphology in the design space can provide scope for significant advantage. Our study is…

Birds and bats are extremely adept flyers: whether in hunting prey, or evading predators, post-stall manoeuvrability is a characteristic of vital importance. Their performance, in this regard, greatly exceeds that of uncrewed aerial…

Traditional vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) aircraft can not achieve optimal efficiency for various payload weights and has limited mobility due to its under-actuation. With the thrust-vectoring mechanism, the proposed modular team UAV…