32 accepted papers
Position tracking based on bearing measurements and Ultra-wideband (UWB) ranging is widely used in robotic navigation tasks. However, due to variations in the number of robots, anchor configurations, UWB tag layouts, and the presence or absence of anonymous visual observations, existing methods typi…
Terrestrial-aerial bimodal vehicles, which integrate the high mobility of aerial robots with the long endurance of ground robots, offer significant potential for autonomous exploration. Given the inherent energy and time constraints in practical exploration tasks, we present a hierarchical framework…
Optimization has been widely used to generate smooth trajectories for motion planning. However, existing trajectory optimization methods show weakness when dealing with large-scale long trajectories. Recent advances in parallel computing have accelerated optimization in some fields, but how to effic…
Differential drive robots are widely used in various scenarios thanks to their straightforward principle, from household service robots to disaster response field robots. The nonholonomic dynamics and possible lateral slip of these robots lead to difficulty in getting feasible and high-quality traje…
Terrestrial-aerial bimodal vehicles, which integrate the high mobility of aerial robots with the long endurance of ground robots, offer significant potential for autonomous exploration. Given the inherent energy and time constraints in practical exploration tasks, we present a hierarchical framework
Terrestrial-aerial bimodal vehicles (TABVs) can fly to avoid obstacles and move safely on the ground to save energy, offering enhanced adaptability and flexibility in various challenging environments. However, a robust localization approach becomes a bottleneck to stably applying the TABVs in real-w
With the increasing integration of robots into human life, their role in architectural spaces where people spend most of their time has become more prominent. While motion capabilities and accurate localization for automated robots have rapidly developed, the challenge remains to generate efficient,
CoNi-MPC [1] provides an efficient framework for UAV control in air-ground cooperative tasks by relying exclusively on relative states, eliminating the need for global state estimation. However, its lack of environmental information poses significant challenges for obstacle avoidance. To address thi
Ultra-wideband (UWB)-vision fusion localization has achieved extensive applications in the domain of multiagent relative localization. The challenging matching problem between robots and visual detection renders existing methods highly dependent on identity-encoded hardware or delicate tuning algori
Ultra-wideband (UWB) has shown promising potential in GPS-denied localization thanks to its lightweight and drift-free characteristics, while the accuracy is limited in real scenarios due to its sensitivity to sensor arrangement and non-Gaussian pattern induced by multi-path or multi-signal interfer
Terrain analysis is critical for the practical application of ground mobile robots in real-world tasks, especially in outdoor unstructured environments. In this paper, we propose a novel spatial-temporal traversability assessment method, which aims to enable autonomous robots to effectively navigate
Autonomous navigation of car-like robots on uneven terrain poses unique challenges compared to flat terrain, particularly in traversability assessment and terrain-associated kinematic modelling for motion planning. This paper introduces SEB-Naver, a novel SE(2)-based local navigation framework desig
Optimization has been widely used to generate smooth trajectories for motion planning. However, existing trajectory optimization methods show weakness when dealing with large-scale long trajectories. Recent advances in parallel computing have accelerated optimization in some fields, but how to effic
Terrestrial and aerial bimodal vehicles have gained significant interest due to their energy efficiency and versatile maneuverability across different domains. However, most existing passive-wheeled bimodal vehicles rely on attitude regulation to generate forward thrust, which inevitably results in
Perception is necessary for autonomous navigation in an unknown area crowded with obstacles. It’s challenging for a robot to navigate safely without any sensors that can sense the environment, resulting in a blind robot, and becomes more difficult when comes to a group of robots. However, it could b…
Multi-robot teams have attracted attention from industry and academia for their ability to perform collaborative tasks in unstructured environments, such as wilderness rescue and collaborative transportation. In this letter, we propose a trajectory planning method for a non-holonomic robotic team wi
Multi-robot system is desired to achieve global cost-efficiency by fully utilizing individual advantages. For example, leveraging unmanned aerial vehicles' (UAVs') agility for inspection and ground vehicles' (UGVs') capability for heavy-duty tasks. Coordinating the motion of multiple robots smartly
Autonomous target tracking with quadrotors has wide applications in many scenarios, such as cinematographic follow-up shooting or suspect chasing. Target motion prediction is necessary when designing the tracking planner. However, the widely used constant velocity or constant rotation assumption can…
Tracked robots with reconfigurable mechanisms exhibit great maneuverability due to their adaptability to complex ground conditions. Reconfigurable tracked robots with geometry-changing tracks show further obstacle-crossing capabilities with compact dimensions. However, existing systems face deployme…
Autonomous navigation of ground robots on uneven terrain is being considered in more and more tasks. However, uneven terrain will bring two problems to motion planning: how to assess the traversability of the terrain and how to cope with the dynamics model of the robot associated with the terrain. T…
Mutual localization provides a consensus of reference frame as an essential basis for cooperation in multi-robot systems. Previous works have developed certifiable and robust solvers for relative transformation estimation between each pair of robots. However, recovering relative poses for robotic sw
Mutual localization plays a crucial role in multi-robot cooperation. CREPES, a novel system that focuses on six degrees of freedom (DOF) relative pose estimation for multi-robot systems, is proposed in this paper. CREPES has a compact hardware design using active infrared (IR) LEDs, an IR fish-eye c…
This letter presents a novel solution for UAV control in cooperative multi-robot systems, which can be used in various scenarios such as leader-following, landing on a moving base, or specific relative motion with a target. Unlike classical methods that tackle UAV control in the world frame, we dire
Terrestrial and aerial bimodal vehicles have gained widespread attention due to their cross-domain maneuverability. Nevertheless, their bimodal dynamics significantly increase the complexity of motion planning and control, thus hindering robust and efficient autonomous navigation in unknown environm…
This letter presents a novel and retractable ring-shaped quadrotor called Ring-Rotor that can adjust the vehicle's length and width simultaneously. Unlike other morphing quadrotors with high platform complexity and poor controllability, Ring-Rotor uses only one servo motor for morphing but reduces t
For letting mobile robots travel flexibly through complicated environments, increasing attention has been paid to the whole-body collision evaluation. Most existing works either opt for the conservative corridor-based methods that impose strict requirements on the corridor generation, or ESDF-based…
With the development of robotics, ground robots are no longer limited to planar motion. Passive height variation due to complex terrain and active height control provided by special structures on robots require a more general navigation planning framework beyond 2D. Existing methods rarely considers…
Service robots have attracted extensive attention due to specially designed functions, such as mobile manipulators or robots with extra structures. For robots that have changing shapes, autonomous navigation in the real world presents new challenges. In this paper, we propose a trajectory optimizati…
Mutual localization is essential for coordination and cooperation in multi-robot systems. Previous works have tackled this problem by assuming available correspondences between measurements and received odometry estimations. However, the correspondence is difficult to acquire, especially for unified
Accurate localization and tracking are a fundamental requirement for robotic applications. Localization systems like GPS, optical tracking, simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) are used for daily life activities, research, and commercial applications. Ultra-wideband (UWB) technology provides…