10 accepted papers
Recently, the utilization of aerial manipulators for performing pushing tasks in non-destructive testing (NDT) applications has seen significant growth. Such operations entail physical interactions between the aerial robotic system and the environment. End-effectors with multiple contact points are…
Pushing tasks performed by aerial manipulators can be used for contact-based industrial inspections. Underactuated aerial vehicles are widely employed in aerial manipulation due to their widespread availability and relatively low cost. Industrial infrastructures often consist of diverse oriented wor…
Aerial robots have been widely used as sensor carrying platforms in a wide range of application, mainly because using this type of systems for physical interaction seems to be an unsuitable operation. This is not only due to the risk of collision and damage of the platform, but also because it is un…
Task level programming based on skills has often been proposed as a mean to decrease programming complexity of industrial robots. Several models are based on encapsulating complex motions into self-contained primitive blocks. A semantic skill is then defined as a deterministic sequence of these prim…
This paper presents a 2-degree-of-freedom (DOF) joint with coupled variable output stiffness that makes use of three actuators, i.e., two for the 2-D joint motions and one for the joint stiffness adjustment. By base-mounting the actuators and the variable stiffness module that contains the passive e
This paper presents the mechatronic design of a robotic arm that is mounted on a ground rover and used to deploy and recover small-scale unmanned aerial vehicles. The arm and rover are part of a network of collaborative robotic agents aiming to enhance current rescue operations by supporting human o…
This letter focuses on the problem of handling impacts by means of an aerial manipulator and proposes a solution that combines the control of the aerial manipulator's end-effector position with an innovative design approach of aerial manipulation systems, consisting of both active and passive joints
The increasing use of Variable Stiffness Actuators (VSAs) in robotic joints is helping robots to meet the demands of human-robot interaction, requiring high safety and adaptability. The key feature of a VSA is the ability to exploit internal elastic elements to obtain a variable output stiffness. Th…
Variable stiffness actuators (VSA) are fostered in robotics for their capability to address physical interaction with a physically adjustable compliance, being advantageous in terms of efficiency, safety and adaptability to unknown environments. Here we introduce the concept of a switching VSA (sVSA…
This paper proposes a semi-autonomous bilateral control architecture for unmanned aerial vehicles. During autonomous navigation, a human operator is allowed to assist the autonomous controller of the vehicle by actively changing its navigation parameters to assist it in critical situations, such as…