Related papers: Airflow Source Seeking on Small Quadrotors Using a…
In practical applications, autonomous quadrotors are still facing significant challenges, such as the detection and avoidance of very small and even dynamic obstacles (e.g., tree branches, power lines). In this paper, we propose a compact,…
Arrays of bioinspired artificial hair-cell airflow velocity sensors can enable flight-by-feel of small, unmanned aircraft. Natural fliers - bats, insects, and birds - have hundred or thousands of velocity sensors distributed across their…
In nature, estimating the location of a molecule source in turbulent airflow is a central, and yet highly challenging problem for mate search and foraging. Recently, it has also received increasing attention in synthetic molecular…
We investigate the performance of a lightweight tracking controller, based on a flow version of the Newton-Raphson method, applied to a miniature blimp and a mid-size quadrotor. This tracking technique admits theoretical performance…
In this paper, we consider a problem motivated by search-and-rescue applications, where an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) seeks to approach the vicinity of a distant quasi-stationary radio frequency (RF) emitter surrounded by local…
A method is developed for estimating the emission rates of contaminants into the atmosphere from multiple point sources using measurements of particulate material deposited at ground level. The approach is based on a Gaussian plume type…
This paper describes the hardware design and flight demonstration of a small quadrotor with imaging sensors for urban mapping, hazard avoidance, and target tracking research. The vehicle is equipped with five cameras, including two pairs of…
Tracking motions of humans or objects in the surroundings of the robot is essential to improve safe robot motions and reactions. In this work, we present an approach for scene flow estimation from low-density and noisy point clouds acquired…
Finding an odor source in a turbulent flow requires effectively leveraging the history of olfactory observations into a robust navigation strategy. In this work, we use tabular Q-learning to train an olfactory search agent with a minimal…
Estimation of unsteady flow fields around flight vehicles may improve flow interactions and lead to enhanced vehicle performance. Although flow-field representations can be very high-dimensional, their dynamics can have low-order…
We describe a method for detecting, locating and quantifying sources of gas emissions to the atmosphere using remotely obtained gas concentration data; the method is applicable to gases of environmental concern. We demonstrate its…
We describe a method to track particles undergoing large displacements. Starting with a list of particle positions sampled at different time points, we assign particle identities by minimizing the sum across all particles of the trace of…
We present a model of a novel measurement scheme to detect small amounts of a gas species via the ground-state fluctuations of the electromagnetic field (dispersion forces) depending on the entire spectral properties of all objects. Here,…
Although quadrotors, and aerial robots in general, are inherently active agents, their perceptual capabilities in literature so far have been mostly passive in nature. Researchers and practitioners today use traditional computer vision…
Autonomous flight of pocket drones is challenging due to the severe limitations on on-board energy, sensing, and processing power. However, tiny drones have great potential as their small size allows maneuvering through narrow spaces while…
Small flying robots can perform landing maneuvers using bio-inspired optical flow by maintaining a constant divergence. However, optical flow is typically estimated from frame sequences recorded by standard miniature cameras. This requires…
Flying quadrotors in tight formations is a challenging problem. It is known that in the near-field airflow of a quadrotor, the aerodynamic effects induced by the propellers are complex and difficult to characterize. Although machine…
This paper develops and experimentally evaluates a navigation function for quadrotor formation flight that is resilient to abrupt quadrotor failures and other obstacles. The navigation function is based on modeling healthy quadrotors as…
This work addresses the practical problem of distributed formation tracking control of a group of quadrotor vehicles in a relaxed sensing graph topology with a very limited sensor set, where only one leader vehicle can access the global…
Automating drone-assisted processes is a complex task. Many solutions rely on trajectory generation and tracking, whereas in contrast, path-following control is a particularly promising approach, offering an intuitive and natural approach…