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Soft-actuated insect-scale micro aerial vehicles (IMAVs) pose unique challenges for designing robust and computationally efficient controllers. At the millimeter scale, fast robot dynamics ($\sim$ms), together with system delay, model…
Action anticipation, intent prediction, and proactive behavior are all desirable characteristics for autonomous driving policies in interactive scenarios. Paramount, however, is ensuring safety on the road -- a key challenge in doing so is…
Recent innovations in autonomous drones have facilitated time-optimal flight in single-drone configurations, and enhanced maneuverability in multi-drone systems by applying optimal control and learning-based methods. However, few studies…
Micro Aerial Vehicles (MAVs) often face a high risk of collision during autonomous flight, particularly in cluttered and unstructured environments. To mitigate the collision impact on sensitive onboard devices, resilient MAVs with…
With UAVs promising capabilities to increase operation flexibility and reduce mission cost, we are exploiting the automated carrier-landing performance advancement that can be achieved by fixed-wing UAVs. To demonstrate such potentials, in…
We demonstrate the peer-to-peer impact of drones flying in close proximity. Understanding these impacts is crucial for planning efficient drone delivery services. In this regard, we conducted a set of experiments using drones at varying…
Novice pilots find it difficult to operate and land unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), due to the complex UAV dynamics, challenges in depth perception, lack of expertise with the control interface and additional disturbances from the ground…
Applications of drones in emergency response, like firefighting, have been promoted in the past decade. As the autonomy of drones continues to improve, the ways in which they are integrated into firefighting teams and their impact on crews…
Autonomous navigation in unknown environments with obstacles remains challenging for micro aerial vehicles (MAVs) due to their limited onboard computing and sensing resources. Although various collision avoidance methods have been…
Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) are increasingly used in automated inspection, delivery, and navigation tasks that require reliable autonomy. This project develops a reinforcement learning (RL) approach to enable a single UAV to…
When pushing the speed limit for aggressive off-road navigation on uneven terrain, it is inevitable that vehicles may become airborne from time to time. During time-sensitive tasks, being able to fly over challenging terrain can also save…
Learning-based model predictive control has emerged as a powerful approach for handling complex dynamics in mechatronic systems, enabling data-driven performance improvements while respecting safety constraints. However, when computational…
Separation provision and collision avoidance to avoid other air traffic are fundamental components of the layered conflict management system to ensure safe and efficient operations. Pilots have visual-based separation responsibilities to…
This paper details the theory and implementation behind practically ensuring safety of remotely piloted racing drones. We demonstrate robust and practical safety guarantees on a 7" racing drone at speeds exceeding 100 km/h, utilizing only…
Drones are becoming versatile in a myriad of applications. This has led to the use of drones for spying and intruding into the restricted or private air spaces. Such foul use of drone technology is dangerous for the safety and security of…
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…
We consider the problem of safe multi-agent motion planning for drones in uncertain, cluttered workspaces. For this problem, we present a tractable motion planner that builds upon the strengths of reinforcement learning and…
Action anticipation, intent prediction, and proactive behavior are all desirable characteristics for autonomous driving policies in interactive scenarios. Paramount, however, is ensuring safety on the road --- a key challenge in doing so is…
Autonomous systems, such as self-driving cars and drones, have made significant strides in recent years by leveraging visual inputs and machine learning for decision-making and control. Despite their impressive performance, these…
Commercial drones are not yet dimensioned to perform indoor autonomous tasks, since they use GPS for their location in the environment. When it comes to a space with physical obstacles (walls, metal, etc.) between the communication of the…