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Albatrosses can travel a thousand kilometers daily over the oceans. This feat is achieved through dynamic soaring, a non-flapping flight strategy where propulsive energy is extracted from horizontal wind shears. Dynamic soaring has been…
The albatross optimized flight maneuver -- known as dynamic soaring -- is nothing but a wonder of biology, physics, and engineering. By utilizing dynamic soaring, the bird can travel in the desired flight direction almost for free by…
In this letter, we reveal a universal, very simple extremum seeking natural feedback law and mechanism that governs, adapts, and generates in real-time, optimized lift variations for successful energy gain flight in presence of wind shear.…
Soaring birds gain energy from stable ascending currents or shear. However, it remains unclear whether energy loss due to drag can be overcome by extracting work from transient turbulent fluctuations. We designed numerical simulations of…
Dynamic soaring enables sustained flight by extracting energy from wind shear, yet it is commonly understood as a cycle-level maneuver that assumes stable flow conditions. In realistic unsteady environments, however, such assumptions are…
Gliding offers small fixed-wing UAVs extended endurance and silent operation but requires accurate energy management, especially under wind disturbances and obstacle constraints. Traditional Total Energy Control Systems based controllers…
For centuries, soaring birds -- such as albatrosses and eagles -- have been mysterious and intriguing for biologists, physicists, aeronautical/control engineers, and applied mathematicians. These fascinating biological organisms have the…
Limited flight distance and time is a common problem for multicopters. We propose a method for finding the optimal speed and sideslip angle of a multicopter flying a given path to achieve either the longest flight distance or time. Since…
Dynamic soaring is a flying technique to exploit the energy available in wind shear layers, enabling potentially unlimited flight without the need for internal energy sources. We propose a framework for autonomous dynamic soaring with a…
Quantifying the collision risk of birds and bats with offshore wind turbines requires an understanding of the drivers of flying animal behavior at offshore wind sites. An omnidirectional S-band radar system was deployed on a research barge…
Airborne wind energy systems aim to generate renewable energy by means of the aerodynamic lift produced by a wing tethered to the ground and controlled to fly crosswind paths. The problem of maximizing the average power developed by the…
Thermal soaring enables birds to perform cost-efficient flights during foraging or migration trips. Yet, although all soaring birds exploit vertical winds effectively, this group contains species that vary strongly in their morphologies.…
Animals learn to adapt speed of their movements to their capabilities and the environment they observe. Mobile robots should also demonstrate this ability to trade-off aggressiveness and safety for efficiently accomplishing tasks. The aim…
Local wind conditions strongly influence drone performance: headwinds increase flight time, crosswinds and wind shear hinder agility in cluttered spaces, while tailwinds reduce travel time. Although adaptive controllers can mitigate…
To realize autonomous shipping, autonomous berthing and unberthing are some of the technical challenges. In the past, numerous research have been done on the optimization of trajectory planning of berthing problems. However, these studies…
This paper investigates optimal takeoff trajectory planning for a quadrotor modeled with vertical-plane rigid body dynamics in an uncertain, one-dimensional wind-field. The wind-field varies horizontally and propagates across an operating…
The vertical trajectory optimization for the en route descent phase is studied in the presence of both along track and cross winds, which are both modeled as functions of altitude. The flight range covers some portion of a cruise segment…
In match race sailing, competitors must steer their boats upwind in the presence of unpredictably evolving weather. Combined with the tacking motion necessary to make upwind progress, this makes it natural to model their path-planning as a…
An approach to control tethered wings for airborne wind energy is proposed. A fixed length of the lines is considered, and the aim of the control system is to obtain figure-eight crosswind trajectories. The proposed technique is based on…
Airborne Wind Energy is a lightweight technology that allows power extraction from the wind using airborne devices such as kites and gliders, where the airfoil orientation can be dynamically controlled in order to maximize performance. The…