19 accepted papers
Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are becoming more common, presenting the need for effective human-robot communication strategies that address the unique nature of unmanned aerial flight. Visual communication via drone flight paths, also called gestures, may prove to be an ideal method. However, the…
Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) are increasingly integrated into diverse human interaction domains that require robust human-robot communication systems. Visual communication techniques have shown promise in their ability to communicate concrete information to observers. Such techniques, often descr
Several independent approaches exist for state estimation and control of multirotor unmanned aerial systems (UASs) that address specific and constrained operational conditions. This work presents a complete end-to-end pipeline that enables precise, aggressive and agile maneuvers for multirotor UASs…
Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) flight paths have been shown to communicate meaning to human observers, similar to human gestural communication. This paper presents the results of a UAV gesture perception study designed to assess how observer viewpoint perspective may impact how humans perceive the sh…
Power-over-tether aircraft is an effective tool for persistent spatiotemporal monitoring of environmental phenomena. This paper presents the design and evaluation of flight trajectories for the tethered aircraft unmanned system (TAUS) sensing a dynamic temperature field. TAUS is a novel power-over-t…
Multirotor unmanned aerial systems (UASs) are often used to transport a variety of payloads. However, the maximum time that the cargo can remain airborne is limited by the flight endurance of the UAS. In this letter, we present a novel approach for two multirotors to transfer a payload between them
Prescribed fires can lessen wildfire severity and control invasive species, but they can also be risky and costly. Unmanned aerial systems can reduce those drawbacks by, for example, dropping ignition spheres to ignite the most hazardous areas. Existing systems, however, lack awareness of the fire v…
This project seeks to generate small Unmanned Aerial System (sUAS) flight paths that are broadly understood by the general population and can communicate states about both the sUAS and its understanding of the world. Previous work in sUAS flight paths has sought to communicate intent, destination, o…
This project seeks to generate small Unmanned Aerial System (sUAS) flight paths that are broadly understood by the general population and can communicate states about both the sUAS and its understanding of the world. Previous work in sUAS flight paths has sought to communicate intent, destination, o
Sensor payloads suspended from parachutes are often used in atmospheric profiling applications. They drift freely and often end up landing in inaccessible regions that make their retrieval challenging or impossible. In this paper, we develop and evaluate an approach using a multirotor unmanned aeria…
Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) can charge Wireless Rechargeable Sensor Networks (WRSNs) in remote or hard to access locations. However, the charging efficiency is heavily affected by the distance between the wireless transmitter and receiver. This efficiency impacts the possible power level increas…
Using an Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) to autonomously deploy soil sensors enables their installation in otherwise hard to access locations. In this paper, we present a system that integrates a UAS and a digging mechanism which can carry, secure, and install a small sensor into dirt effectively and…
Developing surface classification models manually requires significant time and detracts from the goal of automating systems. We create a system that automatically collects the data using an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV), extracts features, trains a large number of classifiers, selects the best clas…
This work presents a study of robot software using the Robot Operating System (ROS), focusing on detecting inconsistencies in physical unit manipulation. We discuss how dimensional analysis, the rules governing how physical quantities are combined, can be used to detect inconsistencies in robot soft…
Changes to robotic systems as they are updated or upgraded often affect the flow of control and sensor data. Developers and users spend a significant amount of time tracing the impact of these changes that could otherwise have negative impacts on the robot's performance and behavior. Changes to the…
Robotic systems often have complex configuration spaces that, when poorly set, can cause failures. In this work we take advantage of the close synergy between user and robot in co-robotic systems to better diagnose and overcome configuration failures. We leverage users' understanding of the system t…
Monitoring and predicting water quality poses significant challenges. Collecting enough information to characterize bodies of water is a critical bottleneck. Collecting data and samples from the surface all the way to the bottom over a short period of time would give water scientists the best spatio…
Ocean monitoring using underwater sensor networks faces communication challenges in retrieving data, communicating large amounts of data between nodes, and covering increasing spatial regions while remaining connected. With underwater sensor networks that are capable of surfacing, unmanned aerial ve…
Using Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) to deploy sensor networks promises an autonomous and useful method of installation in remote or hard to access locations. Some sensors, such as soil moisture sensors, must be physically installed in soft soil, yet UAVs cannot easily determine soil softness with…