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Perching with winged Unmanned Aerial Vehicles has often been solved by means of complex control or intricate appendages. Here, we present a simple yet novel method that relies on passive wing morphing for crash-landing on trees and other…
Aerial manipulators are increasingly used in contact-based industrial applications, where tasks like drilling and pushing require platforms to exert significant forces in multiple directions. To enhance force generation capabilities,…
This paper investigates the pursuit-evasion problem of a defensive gun turret and one or more attacking drones. The turret must ``visit" each attacking drone once, as quickly as possible, to defeat the threat. This constitutes a Shortest…
Humanoid robots maintain balance and navigate by controlling the contact wrenches applied to the environment. While it is possible to plan dynamically-feasible motion that applies appropriate wrenches using existing methods, a humanoid may…
Unlike human beings that can employ the entire surface of their limbs as a means to establish contact with their environment, robots are typically programmed to interact with their environments via their end-effectors, in a collision-free…
This paper addresses the problem of mobile grasping in dynamic, unknown environments where a robot must operate under a limited field-of-view. The fundamental challenge is the inherent trade-off between ``seeing'' around to reduce…
This paper presents the first design of a soft, 3D-printed in flexible filament, lightweight UAV, capable of performing full-body perching using soft tendons, specifically landing and stabilizing on pipelines and irregular surfaces without…
Legged robot locomotion is hindered by a mismatch between applications where legs can outperform wheels or treads, most of which feature deformable substrates, and existing tools for planning and control, most of which assume flat, rigid…
While Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) are increasingly deployed in several missions, their inability of reliable and consistent autonomous landing poses a major setback for deploying such systems truly autonomously. In this paper we present…
Flying drones can be used in a wide range of applications and services from surveillance to package delivery. To ensure robust control and safety of drone operations, cellular networks need to provide reliable wireless connectivity to drone…
Large-scale infrastructures are prone to deterioration due to age, environmental influences, and heavy usage. Ensuring their safety through regular inspections and maintenance is crucial to prevent incidents that can significantly affect…
Flapping-wing insects, birds, and robots are thought to offset the high power cost of oscillatory wing motion by using elastic elements for energy storage and return. Insects possess highly resilient elastic regions in their flight anatomy…
Flapping wing flight is a challenging dynamical problem and is also a very fascinating subject to study in the field of biomimetic robotics. A Bat, in particular, has a very articulated armwing mechanism with high degrees-of-freedom and…
Research in human-drone interactions has primarily focused on cases in which a person interacts with a single drone as an active controller, recipient of information, or a social companion; or cases in which an individual, or a team of…
We describe a framework for changing-contact robot manipulation tasks that require the robot to make and break contacts with objects and surfaces. The discontinuous interaction dynamics of such tasks make it difficult to construct and use a…
In recent years, research on aerial grasping, manipulation, and transportation of objects has garnered significant attention. These tasks often require UAVs to operate safely close to environments or objects and to efficiently grasp…
Collocated tactile sensing is a fundamental enabling technology for dexterous manipulation. However, deformable sensors introduce complex dynamics between the robot, grasped object, and environment that must be considered for fine…
Hybrid rigid-soft robots combine the precision of rigid manipulators with the compliance and adaptability of soft arms, offering a promising approach for versatile grasping in unstructured environments. However, coordinating hybrid robots…
Aerial manipulation combines the versatility and speed of flying platforms with the functional capabilities of mobile manipulation, which presents significant challenges due to the need for precise localization and control. Traditionally,…
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…