17 accepted papers
Aerial humanoid robots can enhance the efficiency and safety of rescue operations in disaster scenarios. The control of such complex machines presents many challenges, for instance, the control of the different locomotion strategies and the stabilization of the transition maneuvers. In this article,
The design and control of winged aircraft and drones is an iterative process aimed at identifying a compromise of mission-specific costs and constraints. When agility is required, shape-shifting (morphing) drones represent an efficient solution. However, morphing drones require the addition of actua…
Co-design optimization strategies usually rely on simplified robot models extracted from CAD. While these models are useful for optimizing geometrical and inertial parameters for robot control, they might overlook important details essential for prototyping the optimized mechanical design. For insta…
Robot multimodal locomotion encompasses the ability to transition between walking and flying, representing a significant challenge in robotics. This work presents an approach that enables automatic smooth transitions between legged and aerial locomotion. Leveraging the concept of Adversarial Motion…
Failure detection and fault tolerant control are fundamental safety features of any aerial vehicle. With the emer-gence of complex, multi-body flying systems such as jet-powered humanoid robots, it becomes of crucial importance to design fault detection and control strategies for these systems, too.…
In this paper we consider the problem of allowing a humanoid robot that is subject to a persistent disturbance, in the form of a payload-carrying task, to follow given planned footsteps. To solve this problem, we combine an online nonlinear centroidal Model Predictive Controller - MPC with a contact…
This paper presents a modeling and control frame-work for multibody flying robots subject to non-negligible aero-dynamic forces acting on the centroidal dynamics. First, aero-dynamic forces are calculated during robot flight in different operating conditions by means of Computational Fluid Dynamics…
Effective control design of flying vehicles requires a reliable estimation of the propellers’ thrust forces to secure a successful flight. Direct measurements of thrust forces, however, are seldom available in practice and on-line thrust estimation usually follows from the application of fusion algo
Jet-powered vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) drones require precise thrust estimation to ensure adequate stability margins and robust maneuvering. Small-scale turbojets have become good candidates for powering heavy aerial drones. However, due to limited instrumentation available in these turboje…
In this letter we present an optimization-based method for controlling aerial manipulators in physical contact with the environment. The multi-task control problem, which includes hybrid force-motion tasks, energetic tasks, and position/postural tasks, is recast as a quadratic programming problem wi
The paper contributes towards the modeling, identification, and control of model jet engines. We propose a nonlinear, second order model in order to capture the model jet engines governing dynamics. The model structure is identified by applying sparse identification of nonlinear dynamics, and then t
It is well known that sensors using strain gauges have a potential dependency on temperature. This creates temperature drift in the measurements of six axis force torque sensors (F/T). The temperature drift can be considerable if an experiment is long or the environmental conditions are different fr…
A common approach to the generation of walking patterns for humanoid robots consists in adopting a layered control architecture. This paper proposes an architecture composed of three nested control loops. The outer loop exploits a robot kinematic model to plan the footstep positions. In the mid laye…
A common architecture for torque controlled humanoid robots consists in two nested loops. The outer loop generates desired joint/motor torques, and the inner loop stabilizes these desired values. In doing so, the inner loop usually compensates for joint friction phenomena, thus removing their inhere…
The success of robots in real-world environments is largely dependent on their ability to interact with both humans and said environment. The FP7 EU project CoDyCo focused on the latter of these two challenges by exploiting both rigid and compliant contacts dynamics in the robot control problem. Reg
Humanoid robots may require a degree of compliance at joint level for improving efficiency, shock tolerance, and safe interaction with humans. The presence of joint elasticity, however, complexifies the control design of humanoid robots. This paper proposes a control framework to extend momentum bas…
Envisioned applications for humanoid robots call for the design of balancing and walking controllers. While promising results have been recently achieved, robust and reliable controllers are still a challenge for the control community dealing with humanoid robotics. Momentum-based strategies have pr…