Related papers: Wake Vectoring for Efficient Morphing Flight
Adaptive morphogenetic robots adapt their morphology and control policies to meet changing tasks and environmental conditions. Many such systems leverage soft components, which enable shape morphing but also introduce simulation and control…
This paper presents an aerial platform capable of performing physically interactive tasks in unstructured environments with human-like dexterity under human supervision. This aerial platform consists of a humanoid torso attached to a…
This paper presents QuadSoft, a novel fully actuated quadrotor equipped with continuous-curvature, tendon-driven soft robotic arms. The design combines a semi-rigid central frame with flexible arms, enabling controlled structural…
Inverted landing in a rapid and robust manner is a challenging feat for aerial robots, especially while depending entirely on onboard sensing and computation. In spite of this, this feat is routinely performed by biological fliers such as…
Autonomous quadrotor flight in confined spaces such as pipes and tunnels presents significant challenges due to unsteady, self-induced aerodynamic disturbances. Very recent advances have enabled flight in such conditions, but they either…
In this paper we present a maneuver regulation scheme for Vertical Take-Off and Landing (VTOL) micro aerial vehicles (MAV). Differently from standard trajectory tracking, maneuver regulation has an intrinsic robustness due to the fact that…
Most birds can navigate seamlessly between aerial and terrestrial environments. Whereas the forelimbs evolved into wings primarily for flight, the hindlimbs serve diverse functions such as walking, hopping, and leaping, and jumping take-off…
Quadrupedal robots hold promising potential for applications in navigating cluttered environments with resilience akin to their animal counterparts. However, their floating base configuration makes them vulnerable to real-world…
This MS thesis outlines my contributions to the closed loop control and system integration of two robotic platforms: 1) Aerobat, a flapping wing robot stabilized by air jets, and 2) Harpy, a bipedal robot equipped with dual thrusters. Both…
Achieving precise, highly-dynamic maneuvers with Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) is a major challenge due to the complexity of the associated aerodynamics. In particular, unsteady effects -- as might be experienced in post-stall regimes or…
Some animals exhibit multi-modal locomotion capability to traverse a wide range of terrains and environments, such as amphibians that can swim and walk or birds that can fly and walk. This capability is extremely beneficial for expanding…
In systems control, the dynamics of a system are governed by modulating its inputs to achieve a desired outcome. For example, to control the thrust of a quad-copter propeller the controller modulates its rotation rate, relying on a…
The operation of drones in cluttered environments and over extended areas demands adaptive flight capabilities to meet the opposing aerodynamic requirements of agile and fast cruise flight. High agility and maneuverability are required to…
A novel onboard tracking approach enabling vision-based relative localization and communication using Active blinking Marker Tracking (AMT) is introduced in this article. Active blinking markers on multi-robot team members improve the…
Utilizing wind hovering techniques of soaring birds can save energy expenditure and improve the flight endurance of micro air vehicles (MAVs). Here, we present a novel method for fully autonomous orographic soaring without a priori…
We present a design, model, and control for a novel jumping-flying robot that is called PogoDrone. The robot is composed of a quadrotor with a passive mechanism for jumping. The robot can continuously jump in place or fly like a normal…
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…
Reconstruction of unsteady vortical flow fields from limited sensor measurements is challenging. We develop machine learning methods to reconstruct flow features from sparse sensor measurements during transient vortex-airfoil wake…
A robot's mechanical parts routinely wear out from normal functioning and can be lost to injury. For autonomous robots operating in isolated or hostile environments, repair from a human operator is often not possible. Thus, much work has…
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…