8 accepted papers
Local navigation in cluttered environments often suffers from dense obstacles and frequent local minima. Conventional local planners rely on heuristics and are prone to failure, while deep reinforcement learning (DRL)-based approaches provide adaptability but are constrained by limited onboard sensi…
In the near future, most deployed spacecraft will be autonomous. Their tasks will involve autonomous rendezvous and proximity operations (RPOs) with large structures, such as inspection, assembly, and maintenance of orbiting space stations, as well as human-assistance tasks over shared workspaces. Y…
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 fixed-wing uncrewed aerial vehicle (UAV). The framework makes u
An omnidirectional multirotor has the maneuverability of decoupled translational and rotational motions, superseding the traditional multirotors' motion capability. Such maneuverability is achieved due to the ability of the omnidirectional multirotor to frequently alter the thrust amplitude and dire
The ability to traverse an unknown environment is crucial for autonomous robot operations. However, due to the limited sensing capabilities and system constraints, approaching this problem with a single robot agent can be slow, costly, and unsafe. For example, in planetary exploration missions, the
Fixed-wing small uncrewed aerial vehicles (sUAVs) possess the capability to remain airborne for extended durations and traverse vast distances. However, their operation is susceptible to wind conditions, particularly in regions of complex terrain where high wind speeds may push the aircraft beyond i…
Fixed-wing aerial vehicles provide an efficient way to navigate long distances or cover large areas for environmental monitoring applications. By design, they also require large open spaces due to limited maneuverability. However, strict regulatory and safety altitude limits constrain the available
Small uncrewed aerial systems (sUASs) are useful tools for 3D reconstruction due to their speed, ease of use, and ability to access high-utility viewpoints. Today, most aerial survey approaches generate a preplanned coverage pattern assuming a planar target region. However, this is inefficient since…