12 accepted papers
Creating dielectric elastomer actuators (DEAs) that mimic natural muscle has proven difficult, as a DEA provides in-plane expansion when actuated, while natural muscle creates contraction upon stimulation. Using a composite fiber-mesh dielectric, a DEA can create planar contraction when compressed t
In this letter, we present a distributed pressure sensory system, inspired by the lateral line found in fish, for estimating hydrodynamic forces acting on an autonomous underwater vehicle. By canceling these forces using the vehicle control system, the dynamics of the vehicle can be decoupled from t
This paper presents a nonlinear, backstepping depth and pitch controller for a dual-bladder buoyancy engine actuated by gear pumps. Flow-rate feedback is obtained using a custom flow sensor comprised of a differential pressure sensor and a small, 3D-printed attachment. The controller is simulated us…
A geometry-based analytic attitude estimation using a rate measurement and measurement of a single reference vector has been recently proposed. Because rigid body attitude estimation is a fundamentally nonlinear problem, the geometry-based method does not contain errors consequent to linearization a…
We present the concept of concurrent flow-based localization and mapping (FLAM) for autonomous field robots navigating within background flows. Different from the classical simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) problem, where the robot interacts with discrete features, FLAM utilizes the conti…
This letter describes and validates the robotic platform of an atmospheric plume monitoring system. The platform consists of a networked flock of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) equipped with environmental sensors. The sensor flock forms an integral component of a dynamic data-driven application sys
This letter extends recent work on globally asymptotically stable nonlinear attitude control of fully actuated vehicles to underactuated vehicles, specifically, a rudderless fixed-wing airplane. Previous work uses a quaternion attitude representation and Lyapunov theory to establish global asymptoti
This letter demonstrates the feasibility of near realtime, plenoptic-inertial navigation on a low-cost central processing unit (CPU). To enable real-time operation, a standard plenoptic camera was modeled as a system of stereo cameras and triangulation was used to estimate its pose from a minimal se
A recurring problem in controlling the attitude of miniature/micro aerial vehicles (MAVs) is the presence of an unknown atmospheric wind. Wind directly affects the vehicle's translational variables, namely the airspeed, angle-of-attack, and sideslip angle, all three of which are important variables
This investigation takes the first step toward characterizing autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) behavior trying to perform station keeping using bioinspired thrusters under the influence of disturbances with multiple amplitudes and frequencies. We describe the similarities between periodic disturb
The lateral line sensory system found in fish and other aquatic organisms is believed to aid in various behavioral activities such as station keeping and wall detection. This paper presents results for an artificial lateral line designed for use in an underwater vehicle. Algorithms for leveraging th…
Navigation for autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) in mid-depth water column is notoriously challenging due to the lack of features for reference. In this paper, we propose a flow-aided cooperative navigation (FACON) strategy to improve the navigation performance of a team of AUVs when neither fre…