Related papers: Controlled Flight of an Insect-Scale Flapping-Wing…
Artificial intelligence-powered pocket-sized air robots have the potential to revolutionize the Internet-of-Things ecosystem, acting as autonomous, unobtrusive, and ubiquitous smart sensors. With a few cm$^{2}$ form-factor, nano-sized…
The design of localization systems for small-scale flapping-wing aerial robots faces relevant challenges caused by the limited payload and onboard computational resources. This paper presents an ultra-wideband localization system…
The mechanical complexity of flapping wings, their unsteady aerodynamic flow, and challenge of making measurements at the scale of a sub-gram flapping-wing flying insect robot (FIR) make its behavior hard to predict. Knowing the precise…
The aerial environment in the operating domain of small-scale natural and artificial flapping wing fliers is highly complex, unsteady and generally turbulent. Considering flapping flight in an unsteady wind environment with a periodically…
Compared with fixed-wing flight, flapping flight can generate a higher lift and is also more maneuverable, largely resulting from the benefits of wing rotation. By analyzing the real wing kinematics of fruit flies, we found that the wing…
Sub-gram flapping-wing flying insect robots (FIRs) are challenging to model because of mechanical complexity in their wings, unsteady aerodynamic flow, and the difficulty of making precise measurements at a small scale. Coupling effects…
Biological studies show that hummingbirds can perform extreme aerobatic maneuvers during fast escape. Given a sudden looming visual stimulus at hover, a hummingbird initiates a fast backward translation coupled with a 180-degree yaw turn,…
With the rapid advance of sophisticated control algorithms, the capabilities of drones to stabilise, fly and manoeuvre autonomously have dramatically improved, enabling us to pay greater attention to entire missions and the interaction of a…
Insect monitoring is critical to improve our understanding and ability to preserve and restore biodiversity, sustainably produce crops, and reduce vectors of human and livestock disease. However, conventional monitoring methods of trapping…
Being motivated by ceiling inspection applications via unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) which require close proximity flight to surfaces, a systematic control approach enabling safe and accurate close proximity flight is proposed in this…
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…
Promoting exploratory movements through contingent feedback can positively influence motor development in infancy. Our ongoing work gears toward the development of a robot-assisted contingency learning environment through the use of small…
Cyborg insects refer to hybrid robots that integrate living insects with miniature electronic controllers to enable robotic-like programmable control. These creatures exhibit advantages over conventional robots in adaption to complex…
This research endeavors to design the perching maneuver and control in ornithopter robots. By analyzing the dynamic interplay between the robot's flight dynamics, feedback loops, and the environmental constraints, we aim to advance our…
We design an insect-sized rolling microrobot driven by continuously rotating wheels. It measures 18mm$\times$8mm$\times$8mm. There are 2 versions of the robot - a 96mg laser-powered one and a 130mg supercapacitor powered one. The robot can…
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…
Inverted landing is a challenging feat to perform in aerial robots, especially without external positioning. However, it is routinely performed by biological fliers such as bees, flies, and bats. Our previous observations of landing…
Flying robots, such as quadrotor drones, offer new possibilities for human-robot interaction but often pose safety risks due to fast-spinning propellers, rigid structures, and noise. In contrast, lighter-than-air flapping-wing robots,…
Natural selection has tuned many flying and swimming animals across different species to share the same narrow design space for optimal high-efficient and energy-saving locomotion, e.g., their dimensionless Strouhal numbers St that relate…
Flapping-Wing Micro Aerial Vehicles (FWMAVs) provide exceptional maneuverability and aerodynamic efficiency but pose significant challenges for onboard control due to nonlinear dynamics and stringent Size, Weight, and Power (SWaP)…