7 accepted papers
Electroaerodynamic (EAD) propulsion, where thrust is produced by collisions between electrostatically-accelerated ions and neutral air, is a potentially transformative method for indoor flight owing to its silent and solid-state nature. Like rotors, EAD thrusters exhibit changes in performance based…
Electroaerodynamic propulsion, where force is produced through collisions between electrostatically accelerated ions and neutral air molecules, is an attractive alternative to propeller- and flapping wing-based methods for micro air vehicle (MAV) flight due to its silent and solid-state nature. One
Modular soft robots combine the strengths of two traditionally separate areas of robotics. As modular robots, they can show robustness to individual failure and reconfigurability; as soft robots, they can deform and undergo large shape changes in order to adapt to their environment, and have inheren…
Nonholonomic control is a candidate to control nonlinear systems with path-dependant states. We investigate an underactuated flying micro-aerial-vehicle, the ionocraft, that requires nonholonomic control in the yaw-direction for complete attitude control. Deploying an analytical control law involves
The limited in-flight battery lifetime of centimeter-scale flying robots is a major barrier to their deployment, especially in applications which take advantage of their ability to reach high vantage points. Perching, where flyers remain fixed in space without use of flight actuators by attachment t
Designing effective low-level robot controllers often entail platform-specific implementations that require manual heuristic parameter tuning, significant system knowledge, or long design times. With the rising number of robotic and mechatronic systems deployed across areas ranging from industrial a
This letter presents an insect-scale microrobot that flies silently and with no mechanical moving parts, using a mechanism with no analogue in the natural world: electrohydrodynamic thrust produced by ions generated via corona discharge. For the first time, attitude and acceleration data are continu