12 accepted papers
Autonomous exploration of unknown 3D environments requires motion planners that can efficiently identify informative regions to explore while continuously adapting to the evolving map of the environment. While existing sampling-based methods have demonstrated strong real-time performance, they often
Autonomous exploration of unknown 3D environments requires motion planners that can efficiently identify informative regions to explore while continuously adapting to the evolving map of the environment. While existing sampling-based methods have demonstrated strong real-time performance, they often…
Multimodal Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), capable of operating in different locomotion modes, offer greater versatility and optimized energy usage. This paper presents a novel trimodal UAV that integrates ground locomotion, hovering, and fixed-wing flight using a shared actuator system. The design
Efficient exploration of large-scale environments remains a critical challenge in robotics, with applications ranging from environmental monitoring to search and rescue operations. This article proposes Frontier Shepherding (FroShe), a bio-inspired multi-robot framework for large-scale exploration.
Quadcopter attitude control involves two tasks: smooth attitude tracking and aggressive stabilization from arbitrary states. Although both can be formulated as tracking problems, their distinct state spaces and control strategies complicate a unified reward function. We propose a multitask deep rein
Georeferenced Enhanced EKF using point cloud Registration and Segmentation (GEERS) is a high-accuracy and consistent-rate localization method for outdoor robots. The localization is estimated by an EKF that fuses wheel odometry, IMU and GNSS measurements, in addition to feedback corrections from a r
The use of Micro Aerial Vehicles (MAVs) for inspection and surveillance missions has proved to be extremely useful, however, their usability is negatively impacted by the large power requirements and the limited operating time. This work describes the design and development of a novel hybrid aerial-…
Employing aerial robots for inspection and maintenance of civil structures can significantly improve the accuracy and efficiency of these missions. While the benefits of aerial robots for distant inspection of structures have been extensively demonstrated, limited airborne solutions exist that can p
Employing small size aerial robots, acting as mobile airborne sensors, to work alongside ground robots can be extremely useful in many different robotic missions. Due to the strict constraints in terms of size, weight, 3D coverage, processing power and power consumption. There are not many technolog…
This letter proposes a low-level visual navigation algorithm to improve visual localization of a mobile robot. The algorithm, based on artificial potential fields, associates each feature in the current image frame with an attractive or neutral potential energy, with the objective of generating a co
In a team of autonomous drones, individual knowledge about the relative location of teammates is essential. Existing relative positioning solutions for teams of small drones mostly rely on external systems such as motion tracking cameras or GPS satellites that might not always be accessible. In this
Teams of fixed wing micro-aerial vehicles (MAVs) could provide a wide area coverage and relay data in wireless ad-hoc networks. In such applications fixed wing MAVs have to be able to regulate an inter-robot distance. Fixed wing MAVs have reduced maneuverability, that is, they cannot perform sharp t…