9 accepted papers
This paper contributes a novel and modularized learning-based method for aerial robots navigating cluttered environments containing hard-to-perceive thin obstacles without assuming access to a map or the full pose estimation of the robot. The proposed solution builds upon a semantically-enhanced Var…
This paper presents a novel strategy for autonomous teamed exploration of subterranean environments using legged and aerial robots. Tailored to the fact that subterranean settings, such as cave networks and underground mines, often involve complex, large-scale and multi-branched topologies, while wi…
This paper contributes a method to design a novel navigation planner exploiting a learning-based collision prediction network. The neural network is tasked to predict the collision cost of each action sequence in a predefined motion primitives library in the robot's velocity-steering angle space, gi…
This paper contributes a novel strategy towards risk-aware motion planning for collision-tolerant aerial robots subject to localization uncertainty. Attuned to the fact that micro aerial vehicles are often tasked to navigate within GPS-denied, possibly unknown, confined and obstacle-filled environme…
This paper contributes a method designed to enable autonomous distributed 3D nuclear radiation field mapping. The algorithm uses a single radiation sensor and a sequence of spatially distributed and robotically acquired radiation measurements across a discretized 3D grid to derive a radiation gradie…
This letter presents the system design, modeling, and control of the Aerial Robotic Chain Manipulator. This new robot design offers the potential to exert strong forces and moments on the environment, carry and lift significant payloads, and simultaneously navigate through narrow corridors. We contr
This work presents the design and autonomous navigation policy of the Resilient Micro Flyer, a new type of collision-tolerant robot tailored to fly through extremely confined environments and manhole-sized tubes. The robot maintains a low weight (<500g) and implements a combined rigid-compliant desi…
This paper presents a novel path planning strategy for fast and agile exploration using aerial robots. Tailored to the combined need for large-scale exploration of challenging and confined environments, despite the limited endurance of micro aerial vehicles, the proposed planner employs motion primi…
This paper overviews the system design, modeling and control of the Aerial Robotic Chain. This new design corresponds to a reconfigurable robotic system of systems consisting of multilinked micro aerial vehicles that presents the ability to cross narrow sections, morph its shape, ferry significant p…