5 accepted papers
We present an analytic solution to the 3D Dubins path problem for paths composed of an initial circular arc, a straight component, and a final circular arc. These are commonly called CSC paths. By modeling the start and goal configurations of the path as the base frame and final frame of an RRPRR ma…
Soil strength testing and collecting soil cores from wetlands is currently a slow, manual process that runs the risk of disturbing and contaminating soil samples. This paper describes a method using an instrumented dart deployed and retrieved by a drone for performing core sample tests in soft soils…
This paper is about the closely-related problems of localization and aggregation for extremely simple robots, for which the only available action is to move in a given direction as far as the geometry of the environment allows. Such problems may arise, for example, in biomedical applications, wherei…
This paper presents a method for performing free-fall penetrometer tests for soft soils using an instrumented dart deployed by a quadcopter. Tests were performed with three soil types and used to examine the effect of drop height on the penetration depth and the deceleration profile. Further tests a…
We present theoretical and practical methods for achieving arbitrary reconfiguration of a set of objects, based on the use of external forces, such as a magnetic field or gravity: Upon actuation, each object is pushed in the same direction until it collides with an obstruction. This concept can be u