19 accepted papers
Aerial docking of micro unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) onto aerial carrier platforms is significantly affected by various disturbances, particularly in the terminal docking phase. The downwash generated by the micro UAV and gust wind can induce considerable disturbances to the carrier, resulting in
Dragonflies show impressive flying skills by achieving both high efficiency and agility. They can perform distinctive flight maneuvers, such as flying backwards, which has proven to be achieved through "force vectoring" mechanism recently. In this paper, to explore the agile flight ability of dragon…
Despite numerous studies of landing on moving ground platforms, landing on midair aerial platforms remains a significant challenge due to aerodynamic interference between Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs). This letter presents a systematic onboard and real-time trajectory optimization solution for the
This letter presents a 5.2g ultra-lightweight air-ground vehicle capable of passive stable flying and terrestrial cruising. Such a design proposes a passive stability layout, including a single-axis rotor, film dampers, and a stabilizer bar. The advantageous synergy between the rotor and the passive
Micro tandem bi-copters are capable of passing through narrow gaps owing to their particular slender shape. However, the introduction of the tilting servo motors leads to a non-minimum phase roll dynamics, which affects their flight stability when exploring environments with unpredictable disturbanc
As an amphibious system, aerial-terrestrial vehicles have demonstrated remarkable environmental adaptability. In order to expand their synergistic advantages, in this letter, an Aerial-Terrestrial vehicle consisting of a pair of unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) and unmanned ground vehicle (UGV) is prop
Flapping Wing Rotorcraft (FWR) combines flapping and rotating wing motion in one element. Such a hybrid design integrates the high-efficiency characteristics of the rotating wing and the high-lift feature of the flapping wing under low Reynolds number, providing a broader range of simultaneous lift…
This letter details the design and validation of a legged terrestrial locomotion system integrated onto a hummingbird-scale flapping wing robot. Two pairs of legs powered by the flight actuators allow forward, reverse, and steering motions while on the ground. Through controlled sinusoidal drive sig
Insects wings are subject to wear and tear from collisions and environmental disturbances during flight. They can tolerate both symmetrical and asymmetrical wing damages while maintaining flight capability to some extent. Drawing inspiration from nature's adaptation capabilities, we investigated the
In this paper, we present a generic fault-tolerant control (FTC) strategy via reinforcement learning (RL). We demonstrate the effectiveness of this method on quadcopter unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). The fault-tolerant control policy is trained to handle actuator and sensor fault/attack. Unlike tr…
In this letter, we present the untethered flight of an at-scale tailless hummingbird robot with independently controlled wings. It represents the first untethered stable flight of a two actuator powered bio-inspired Flapping Wing Micro Air Vehicle (FWMAV) in both indoor and outdoor environment. The
Wings of flying animals can not only generate lift and control torques but also can sense their surroundings. Such dual functions of sensing and actuation coupled in one element are particularly useful for small sized bio-inspired robotic flyers, whose weight, size, and power are under stringent con…
Insects and hummingbirds exhibit extraordinary flight performance and can simultaneously master seemingly conflicting goals: stable hovering and aggressive maneuvering, which are unmatched by conventional small scale man-made vehicles. Flapping Wing Micro Air Vehicles (FWMAVs) hold great promise for…
Micro Aerial Vehicles (MAVs) rely on onboard attitude and position sensors for autonomous flight. Due to their size, weight, and power (SWaP) constraints, most modern MAVs use miniaturized inertial measurement units (IMUs) to provide attitude feedback, which is critical for flight stabilization and…
Biological studies show that hummingbirds can perform extreme aerobatic maneuvers during fast escape. Given a sudden looming visual stimulus at hover, a hummingbird initiates a fast backward translation coupled with a 180-degree yaw turn, which is followed by instant posture stabilization in just un…
As a rapidly growing cyber-physical platform, unmanned aerial vehicles are facing more security threats as their capabilities and applications continue to expand. Adversaries with detailed knowledge about the vehicle could orchestrate sophisticated attacks that are not easily detected or handled by…
Unlike conventional aerial vehicles of fixed or rotary wings, realtime on-board attitude estimation of insect or hummingbird scale Flapping Wing Micro Aerial Vehicles (FWMAVs) is very challenging due to the severe instantaneous oscillations (approximately ten times of gravity on our platform) induce…
Flying animals with flapping wings may best exemplify the astonishing ability of natural selection on design optimization by excelling both stability and maneuverability at insect/hummingbird scale. Flapping Wing Micro Air Vehicle (FWMAV) holds great promise in bridging the performance gap between e…
Controlled hovering of motor driven flapping wing micro aerial vehicles (FWMAVs) is challenging due to its limited control authority, large inertia, vibration produced by wing strokes, and limited components accuracy due to fabrication methods. In this work, we present a hummingbird inspired FWMAV w…