Related papers: Architecting Autonomy for Safe Microgravity Free-F…
Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) has already demonstrated its potential in many civilian applications, and the fa\c{c}ade inspection is among the most promising ones. In this paper, we focus on enabling the autonomous perception and control of…
Small multi-rotor unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), mainly quadcopters, are nowadays ubiquitous in research on aerial autonomy, including serving as scaled-down models for much larger aircraft such as vertical-take-off-and-lift vehicles for…
The construction of a space elevator would be an inspiring feat of planetary engineering of immense cost and risk. But would the benefit outweigh the costs and risks? What, precisely, is the purpose for building such a structure? For…
Multirotors are usually desired to enter confined narrow tunnels that are barely accessible to humans in various applications including inspection, search and rescue, and so on. This task is extremely challenging since the lack of geometric…
Search-based motion planning has been used for mobile robots in many applications. However, it has not been fully developed and applied for planning full state trajectories of Micro Aerial Vehicles (MAVs) due to their complicated dynamics…
Ensuring the functional safety of Autonomous Vehicles (AVs) requires motion planning modules that not only operate within strict real-time constraints but also maintain controllability in case of system faults. Existing safeguarding…
Many unmanned aerial vehicle surveillance and monitoring applications require observations at precise locations over long periods of time, ideally days or weeks at a time (e.g. ecosystem monitoring), which has been impractical due to…
This work presents a global-to-local, task-aware fault detection and identification (FDI) framework for multi-spacecraft systems conducting collaborative inspection missions in low Earth orbit. The inspection task is represented by a global…
The technological advancements of recent years have steadily increased the complexity of vehicle-internal software systems, and the ongoing development towards autonomous driving will further aggravate this situation. This is leading to a…
This paper introduces a high-performance artificial intelligence operating system tailored for low-altitude aviation, designed to address key challenges such as real-time task execution, computational efficiency, and seamless modular…
Autonomous exploration is one of the important parts to achieve the autonomous operation of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs). To improve the efficiency of the exploration process, a fast and autonomous exploration planner (FAEP) is proposed…
This paper presents a mini-review of the current state of research in mobile manipulators with variable levels of autonomy, emphasizing their associated challenges and application environments. The need for mobile manipulators in different…
One of the most challenging tasks for a flying robot is to autonomously navigate between target locations quickly and reliably while avoiding obstacles in its path, and with little to no a-priori knowledge of the operating environment. This…
The growing advancements in Autonomous Vehicles (AVs) have emphasized the critical need to prioritize the absolute safety of AV maneuvers, especially in dynamic and unpredictable environments or situations. This objective becomes even more…
With the ever growing number of space debris in orbit, the need to prevent further space population is becoming more and more apparent. Refueling, servicing, inspection and deorbiting of spacecraft are some example missions that require…
This paper presents the development and evaluation of an optimization-based autonomous trajectory planning algorithm for the asteroid reconnaissance phase of a deep-space exploration mission. The reconnaissance phase is a low-altitude flyby…
Space robotics applications, such as Active Space Debris Removal (ASDR), require representative testing before launch. A commonly used approach to emulate the microgravity environment in space is air-bearing based platforms on flat-floors,…
The safety of autonomous systems in dynamic and hazardous environments poses significant challenges. This paper presents a testing approach named SCALOFT for systematically assessing the safety of an autonomous aerial drone in a mine.…
A computational system is called autonomous if it is able to make its own decisions, or take its own actions, without human supervision or control. The capability and spread of such systems have reached the point where they are beginning to…
For intelligent quadcopter UAVs, a robust and reliable autonomous planning system is crucial. Most current trajectory planning methods for UAVs are suitable for static environments but struggle to handle dynamic obstacles, which can pose…