Related papers: Controlled Flight of an Insect-Scale Flapping-Wing…
Insect-scale micro-aerial vehicles, especially lightweight, flapping-wing robots, are becoming increasingly important for safe motion sensing in spatially constrained environments such as living spaces. However, yaw control using flapping…
Aerial insects exhibit highly agile maneuvers such as sharp braking, saccades, and body flips under disturbance. In contrast, insect-scale aerial robots are limited to tracking non-aggressive trajectories with small body acceleration. This…
Flying insects can perform rapid, sophisticated maneuvers like backflips, sharp banked turns, and in-flight collision recovery. To emulate these in aerial robots weighing less than a gram, known as flying insect robots (FIRs), a fast and…
Aerial robots the size of a honeybee (~100 mg) have advantages over larger robots because of their small size, low mass and low materials cost. Previous iterations have demonstrated controlled flight but were difficult to fabricate because…
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…
Sensor networks with devices capable of moving could enable applications ranging from precision irrigation to environmental sensing. Using mechanical drones to move sensors, however, severely limits operation time since flight time is…
A hover-capable insect-inspired flying robot that can remain long in the air has shown its potential use for both confined indoor and outdoor applications to complete assigned tasks. In this letter, we report improvements in the flight…
In this paper, we introduce advances in the sensor suite of an autonomous flying insect robot (FIR) weighing less than a gram. FIRs, because of their small weight and size, offer unparalleled advantages in terms of material cost and…
There is still a long way to go before artificial mini robots are really used for search and rescue missions in disaster-hit areas due to hindrance in power consumption, computation load of the locomotion, and obstacle-avoidance system.…
We discuss the problem of designing and implementing controllers for insect-scale flapping-wing micro air vehicles (FWMAVs), from a unifying perspective and employing two different experimental platforms; namely, a Harvard RoboBee-like…
The development of automatic perception systems and techniques for bio-inspired flapping-wing robots is severely hampered by the high technical complexity of these platforms and the installation of onboard sensors and electronics. Besides,…
Wings of flying animals can not only generate lift and control torques but also can sense their surroundings. Such dual functions of sensing and actuation coupled in one element are particularly useful for small sized bio-inspired robotic…
Flying insects are capable of vision-based navigation in cluttered environments, reliably avoiding obstacles through fast and agile maneuvers, while being very efficient in the processing of visual stimuli. Meanwhile, autonomous micro air…
Here we present the design of an insect-scale microrobot that generates lift by spinning its wings. This is in contrast to most other microrobot designs at this size scale which rely on flapping wings to produce lift. The robot has a wing…
Autonomous flight of flapping-wing robots is a major challenge for robot perception. Most of the previous sense-and-avoid works have studied the problem of obstacle avoidance for flapping-wing robots considering only static obstacles. This…
In this work, we present an experimental setup and guide to enable the perching of large flapping-wing robots. The combination of forward flight, limited payload, and flight oscillations imposes challenging conditions for localized…
Insects and hummingbirds exhibit extraordinary flight capabilities and can simultaneously master seemingly conflicting goals: stable hovering and aggressive maneuvering, unmatched by small scale man-made vehicles. Flapping Wing Micro Air…
Stability of flapping flight, a natural requirement for flying insects, is one of the major challenges for designing micro aerial vehicles (MAVs). To better understand how a flying insect could stabilize itself during hover, we have…
Contrary to the stunning feats observed in birds of prey, aerial manipulation and grasping with flying robots still lack versatility and agility. Conventional approaches using rigid manipulators require precise positioning and are subject…
Flapping wings are a bio-inspired method to produce lift and thrust in aerial robots, leading to quiet and efficient motion. The advantages of this technology are safety and maneuverability, and physical interaction with the environment,…