Publications
116 results found
Zufferey R, Siddall R, Armanini SF, et al., 2022, Airframe Design for Plunge Diving, Biosystems and Biorobotics, Pages: 77-98
In this chapter the design of a plunge diving AquaMAV is detailed. This enhanced AquaMAV prototype is capable of propelled flight, wing retraction for diving into water and jet propelled aquatic escape. The selection process for key components is detailed, as well as the specific attributes necessary for aerial-aquatic locomotion. The AquaMAV includes some limited automation, to allow the robot to self launch when in water, where radio communication is challenging.
Zufferey R, Siddall R, Armanini SF, et al., 2022, Why Swim and Fly?, Biosystems and Biorobotics, Pages: 13-18
We live on a water-covered planet that is facing rapid change, both globally and locally, due to a combination of human behaviour and natural phenomena [31]. Understanding these changes requires in-depth scientific understanding of our environment. Key to enabling this is the fast, accurate and repeated provision of extensive physical data. However, obtaining dependable geospatial data is itself frequently a challenge, requiring new sensing approaches or considerable adjustments to existing methods.
Zufferey R, Siddall R, Armanini SF, et al., 2022, Aquatic Escape: Fast Escape with a Jet Thruster, Biosystems and Biorobotics, Pages: 57-76
In a previous chapter an idealised water jet thruster was analysed, and it was argued that the most effective system would use large pressures to drive a small volume of water. In this chapter a more detailed physical model of water jet propulsion will be introduced, and the key design features of a jet thruster prototype detailed. Consistent static thrust from the fabricated device is then demonstrated.
Zufferey R, Siddall R, Armanini SF, et al., 2022, Aerial-Aquatic Locomotion in Nature, Biosystems and Biorobotics, Pages: 19-31
Water covers 363 million square km, or 72% of the earth’s surface. The vast majority of this water is saline (96%), frozen (2%) or groundwater (1%). The 10 5 km 3 of surface freshwater (0.008%) is in turn concentrated almost entirely in three large great lake systems (Fig. 3.1), with a vanishing small amount of surface freshwater forming lakes and rivers.
Zufferey R, Siddall R, Armanini SF, et al., 2022, Efficient Water-Air Propulsion with a Single Propeller, Biosystems and Biorobotics, Pages: 155-166
In the previous chapters, aquatic launch and dives into water with small flying robots have been demonstrated. An AquaMAV prototype was presented which was capable of self propelled-flight in air and able to escape water, but this robot had no means of propelling itself beneath the surface. To add aquatic locomotion it is attractive to use the same propulsion system as is used for flight, as this reduces the weight and complexity of the system. However, the increase in load on the propeller in a denser fluid results in much slower rotation speeds, and means a significant loss of motor efficiency.
Zufferey R, Siddall R, Armanini SF, et al., 2022, The Physics of Aerial Aquatic Locomotion, Biosystems and Biorobotics, Pages: 43-53
This chapter presents an overview of some fundamental physical laws and concepts at play in generic, as clarified in Figs. 5.1 and 5.2. The vehicle-specific physics are then introduced in the following chapters and form the basis for locomotion derived for the different vehicles presented.
Zufferey R, Siddall R, Armanini SF, et al., 2022, Sailing and Flying with a Multimodal Robot, Biosystems and Biorobotics, Pages: 167-195
The field of aerial-aquatic robotics promises tremendous benefits in data collection as well as unmatched flexibility and remote access. However, the majority of existing aerial-aquatic robots are unable to perform scientific tasks at significant depth, limited by the weight penalty that any pressure resistant container would add. In addition, sealing of an actuated robot is difficult, again adding significant weight to small systems. Wireless communication is a major challenge for underwater robots and certainly poses great constraints to operation at distance. Lastly, underwater propulsion is often highly inefficient due to geometries optimised for flight [109]. Indeed, most aerial-aquatic vehicles either have severely limited water range and operation, stay in very shallow waters or function only in de-ionised water. Too often, the benefit of underwater locomotion is overshadowed by the weight, and complexity increases that are required for reliable operation. This negatively impacts flight performance.
Zufferey R, Siddall R, Armanini SF, et al., 2022, Practical Tips for Building Aerial-Aquatic Robots, Biosystems and Biorobotics, Pages: 213-228
This book would not be complete without a chapter on practical hardware and software elements used throughout the presented robots. We hope that this can serve as a rough toolbox for aerial-aquatic vehicle development, and cover some of the prototyping choices that are often under-reported in academic literature, but consume outsize research time.
Zufferey R, Siddall R, Armanini SF, et al., 2022, Preface, Biosystems and Biorobotics, Vol: 29, Pages: v-vii, ISSN: 2195-3562
Zufferey R, Siddall R, Armanini SF, et al., 2022, Breaking the Surface, Biosystems and Biorobotics, Pages: 3-11
Most animals use different forms of locomotion to move through a varied environment. This allows them to adapt to find food, escape threats or migrate, while minimising their energetic cost of locomotion. To do so, animals must use the same locomotor modules to perform specialised tasks that often have opposed requirements. For example, an animal diving into the water to hunt requires a structure that is as lightweight as possible for efficient flight, whilst still being structurally strong when impacting the water’s surface.
Zufferey R, Siddall R, Armanini SF, et al., 2022, Synthetic Aerial Aquatic Locomotion, Biosystems and Biorobotics, Pages: 33-41
A wealth of research exists into the broader question of how robotic mobility can be expanded beyond a single domain/terrain. A significant amount of recent research attention has been given to the implementation of aerial-terrestrial mobility into miniature robots [94], resulting in mobile robots with shared subsystems and additional mechanisms which are analogous to the AquaMAV robot presented in Chap. 7.
Zufferey R, Siddall R, Armanini SF, et al., 2022, Aquatic Escape: Repeatable Escape with Combustion, Biosystems and Biorobotics, Pages: 131-153
Several systems have been developed with aerial-aquatic locomotion capabilities but without demonstrating consecutive transitions to flight from water. Moreover, while some multirotor vehicles possess the ability to operate in both air and water [108, 109], the transition to flight is typically constrained to very calm sea conditions. Fixed-wing robots able to transition dynamically between water and air through high-power thrust bursts represent a low-cost, versatile and more reliable solution. Compared to multirotor vehicles, this approach that would simultaneously result in an increased flight range and allow for aquatic escape in a wider variety of conditions.
Zufferey R, Siddall R, Armanini SF, et al., 2022, Between Sea and Sky: Aerial Aquatic Locomotion in Miniature Robots, Biosystems and Biorobotics, Pages: 1-9
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Stedman H, Kocer BB, Kovac M, et al., 2022, VRTAB-Map: A Configurable Immersive Teleoperation Framework with Online 3D Reconstruction, 21st IEEE International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality (ISMAR), Publisher: IEEE COMPUTER SOC, Pages: 104-110, ISSN: 2771-1102
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Schwab F, Lunsford ET, Hong T, et al., 2021, Body Caudal Undulation Measured by Soft Sensors and Emulated by Soft Artificial Muscles, INTEGRATIVE AND COMPARATIVE BIOLOGY, Vol: 61, Pages: 1955-1965, ISSN: 1540-7063
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- Citations: 3
Orr L, Stephens B, Kocer BB, et al., 2021, A high payload aerial platform for infrastructure repair and manufacturing, 2021 Aerial Robotic Systems Physically Interacting with the Environment (AIRPHARO), Publisher: IEEE, Pages: 1-6
The use of aerial robots in construction is an area of general interest in the robotics community. Autonomous aerial systems have the potential to improve safety, efficiency and sustainability of industrial construction and repair processes. Several solutions have been deployed in this domain focusing on problems in aerial manipulation and control using existing aerial platforms which are not specialised for the specific challenges in operating on a construction site. This paper presents a new compact, high thrust aerial platform that can act as a modular, application agnostic base for demonstrating a wide variety of capabilities. The platform has been built and tested flying both with manual controls and autonomously in a motion tracking arena while carrying a payload of up to 7.3 kg with a maximum flight time between 10–34 mins (payload dependent). In the future, this platform will be combined with vision based tracking sensors, manipulators and other hardware to operate in and interact with an outdoor environment. Future applications may include manipulation of heavy objects, deposition of material and navigating confined spaces.
Kocer BB, Ho B, Zhu X, et al., 2021, Forest drones for environmental sensing and nature conservation, 2021 Aerial Robotic Systems Physically Interacting with the Environment (AIRPHARO), Publisher: IEEE, Pages: 1-8
Protecting our nature and biodiversity is essential. For this purpose, remote sensing robotic platforms are increasingly explored to collect spatial and temporal data. However, there is still little attention on leveraging aerial robots to interact with trees for sample collection and targeted countermeasure deployment. In this study, we propose platforms and methodology that offer the use of aerial robots in the forests to conduct various tasks including leaf sample collection, visual sensing of forest topology and autonomous sensor placement. With the developed virtual reality (VR) interface, we show that remote environmental sensing, detection of plant pathogens, and sample collection are viable tasks that can be achieved by the proposed platforms. In this context, physical and visual sensing approaches as well as various aerial robots are introduced and discussed for forest applications.
Kocer B, Hady A, Kandath H, et al., 2021, Deep neuromorphic controller with dynamic topology for aerial robots, ICRA 2021, Publisher: IEEE, Pages: 110-116
Current aerial robots are increasingly adaptive; they can morph to enable operation in changing conditions to complete diverse missions. Each mission may require the robot to conduct a different task. A conventional learning approach can handle these variations when the system is trained for similar tasks in a representative environment. However, it may result in overfitting to the new data stream or the failure to adapt, leading to degradation or a potential crash. These problems can be mitigated with an excessive amount of data and embedded model, but the computational power and the memory of the aerial robots are limited. In order to address the variations in the model, environment as well as the tasks within onboard computation limitations, we propose a deep neuromorphic controller approach with variable topologies to handle each different condition and the data stream with a feasible computation and memory allocation. The proposed approach is based on a deep neuromorphic (multi and variable layered neural network) controller with dynamic depth and progressive layer adaptation for each new data stream. This adaptive structure is combined with a switching function to form a sliding mode controller. The network parameter update rule guarantees the stability of the closed loop system by the convergence of the error dynamics to the sliding surface. Being the first implementation on an aerial robot in this context, the results illustrate the adaptation capability, stability, computational efficiency as well as the real-time validation.
Kovac M, Sequeira Guedes Tristany Farinha A, di Tria J, et al., 2021, Challenges in control and autonomy of unmanned aerial-aquatic vehicles, 29th Mediterranean Conference on Control and Automation (MED), Publisher: IEEE, Pages: 937-942
Autonomous aquatic vehicles capable of flight can deploy more rapidly, access remote or constricted areas, overfly obstacles and transition easily between distinct bodies of water. This new class of vehicles can be referred as Unmanned Aerial-Aquatic Vehicles (UAAVs), and is capable of reaching distant locations rapidly, conducting measurements and returning to base. This greatly improves upon current solutions, which often involve integrating different types of vehicles (e.g. vessels releasing underwater vehicles), or rely on manpower (e.g. sensors dropped manually from ships). Thanks to recent research efforts, UAAVs are becoming more sophisticated and robust. Nonetheless numerous challenges remain to be addressed, and particularly dedicated control and sensing solutions are still scarce. This paper discusses challenges and opportunities in UAAV control, sensing and actuation. Following a brief overview of the state of the art, we elaborate on the requirements and challenges for the main types of robots and missions proposed in the literature to date, and highlight existing solutions where available. The concise but wide-ranging overview provided will constitute a useful starting point for researchers undertaking UAAV control work.
Wiesemuller F, Winston C, Poulin A, et al., 2021, Self-sensing cellulose structures with design-controlled stiffness, IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters, Vol: 6, Pages: 4017-4024, ISSN: 2377-3766
Robots are often used for sensing and sampling in natural environments. Within this area, soft robots have become increasingly popular for these tasks because their mechanical compliance makes them safer to interact with. Unfortunately, if these robots break while working in vulnerable environments, they create potentially hazardous waste. Consequently, the development of compliant, biodegradable structures for soft, eco-robots is a relevant research area that we explore here. Cellulose is one of the most abundant biodegradable materials on earth, but it is naturally very stiff, which makes it difficult to use in soft robots. Here, we look at both biologically and kirigami inspired structures that can be used to reduce the stiffness of cellulose based parts for soft robots up to a factor of 19 000. To demonstrate this, we build a compliant force and displacement sensing structure from microfibrillated cellulose. We also describe a novel manufacturing technique for these structures, provide mechanical models that allow designers to specify their stiffness, and conclude with a description of our structure's performance.
Wiesemuller F, Winston C, Miriyev A, et al., 2021, Self-sensing cellulose structures with design-controlled stiffness, Robosoft 2021
Xiao F, Zheng P, Di Tria J, et al., 2021, Optic flow based reactive collision prevention for MAVs using the fictitious obstacle hypothesis, IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters, Vol: 6, Pages: 3144-3151, ISSN: 2377-3766
Optical flow sensors and optical flow divergence (OFD) have offered partial solutions for obstacle avoidance, landing, and perching with micro aerial vehicles. Theoretically, OFD can indicate the risk of collision, providing that the sensors’ field of view is bounded within a single flat surface on the obstacle. However, in the real world, directly measuring the risk of collision with OFD generates false alarms due to rapidly changing speeds and irregular surroundings. In this letter, we present a new obstacle detection strategy based on an extended Kalman filter (EKF) combining the OFD with inertial sensing. The introduction of a fictitious obstacle hypothesis and the use of the EKF estimates enable us to differentiate the surrounding-generated OFD from the OFD caused by the actual obstacle. An embedded constant zero-OFD controller is then used for post-detection emergency deceleration. The ultra-light OFD estimation and control system, with a mass of 20 g , estimates OFD at 160 Hz . The system was validated on a 158 g mini quadrotor in both laboratory and field tests. Experimental results illustrate that the presented system can achieve accurate obstacle detection, near-obstacle distance estimation, and controlled deceleration to prevent collisions. 1 1Video attachment: https://youtu.be/yIyYHYN0jOw.
Wu Z, Lou C, Jin Z, et al., 2021, Robotic Electrospinning Actuated by Non-Circular Join Continuum Manipulator for Endoluminal Therapy, IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), Publisher: IEEE, Pages: 1473-1479, ISSN: 1050-4729
Wiesemueller F, Miriyev A, Kovac M, 2021, Zero-footprint eco-robotics: A new perspective on biodegradable robots, 1st AIRPHARO Workshop on Aerial Robotic Systems Physically Interacting with the Environment (AIRPHARO), Publisher: IEEE
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Miriyev A, Kovac M, 2020, Skills for physical artificial intelligence, Nature Machine Intelligence, Vol: 2, Pages: 658-660, ISSN: 2522-5839
Synthesizing robots via physical artificial intelligence is a multidisciplinary challenge for future robotics research. An education methodology is needed for researchers to develop a combination of skills in physical artificial intelligence.
Farinha A, Zufferey R, Zheng P, et al., 2020, Unmanned aerial sensor placement for cluttered environments, IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters, Vol: 5, Pages: 6623-6630, ISSN: 2377-3766
Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have been shown to be useful for the installation of wireless sensor networks (WSNs). More notably, the accurate placement of sensor nodes using UAVs, opens opportunities for many industrial and scientific uses, in particular, in hazardous environments or inaccessible locations. This publication proposes and demonstrates a new aerial sensor placement method based on impulsive launching. Since direct physical interaction is not required, sensor deployment can be achieved in cluttered environments where the target location cannot be safely approached by the UAV, such as under the forest canopy. The proposed method is based on mechanical energy storage and an ultralight shape memory alloy (SMA) trigger. The developed aerial system weighs a total of 650 grams and can execute up to 17 deployments on a single battery charge. The system deploys sensors of 30 grams up to 4 meters from a target with an accuracy of ±10 cm. The aerial deployment method is validated through more than 80 successful deployments in indoor and outdoor environments. The proposed approach can be integrated in field operations and complement other robotic or manual sensor placement procedures. This would bring benefits for demanding industrial applications, scientific field work, smart cities and hazardous environments [Video attachment: https://youtu.be/duPRXCyo6cY].
Hamaza S, Kovac M, 2020, Omni-drone: on the design of a novel aerial manipulator with omni-directional workspace, 17th International Conference on Ubiquitous Robots (UR), Publisher: IEEE, Pages: 153-158, ISSN: 2325-033X
Aerial manipulation is a nascent research area that offers major impact for infrastructure monitoring and repair. While several design and control methods have been presented, there is still a need for new mechatronic solutions that are structurally optimised for aerial manipulation tasks. In this paper we present a novel design for a manipulator tailored for aerial applications with a high level of morphological integration with the robot frame. A hybrid system is presented that comprises a 5-bar linkage parallel robot with an additional active joint for the swirling motion about a pivotal point. The design offers an omnidirectional workspace about the aerial vehicle, enhancing the versatility of the aerial system and the tasks that can be accomplished. The mechanical design of the proposed robot, the analysis of the kinematics and the study of the workspace are presented. The novel manipulator represents the first of its kind, enabling aerial interaction with ceilings, curved surfaces and side interaction with facades.
Zheng P, Tan X, Kocer BB, et al., 2020, TiltDrone: a fully-actuated tilting quadrotor platform, IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters, Vol: 5, Pages: 6845-6852, ISSN: 2377-3766
Multi-directional aerial platforms can fly in almost any orientation and direction, often maneuvering in ways their under-actuated counterparts cannot match. A subset of multi-directional platforms are fully-actuated multirotors, where all six degrees of freedom are independently controlled without redundancies. Fully-actuated multirotors possess much greater freedom of movement than conventional multirotor drones, allowing them to perform complex sensing and manipulation tasks. While there has been comprehensive research on multi-directional multirotor control systems, the spectrum of hardware designs remain fragmented. This paper sets out the hardware design architecture of a fully-actuated quadrotor and its associated control framework. Following the novel platform design, a prototype was built to validate the control scheme and characterize the flight performance. The resulting quadrotor was shown in operation to be capable of holding a stationary hover at 30° incline, and track position commands by thrust vectoring.
Debruyn D, Zufferey R, Armanini SF, et al., 2020, MEDUSA: a multi-environment dual-robot for underwater sample acquisition, IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters, Vol: 5, Pages: 4564-4571, ISSN: 2377-3766
Aerial-aquatic robots possess the unique ability of operating in both air and water. However, this capability comes with tremendous challenges, such as communication incompatibility, increased airborne mass, potentially inefficient operation in each of the environments and manufacturing difficulties. Such robots, therefore, typically have small payloads and a limited operational envelope, often making their field usage impractical. We propose a novel robotic water sampling approach that combines the robust technologies of multirotors and underwater micro-vehicles into a single integrated tool usable for field operations. The proposed solution encompasses a multirotor capable of landing and floating on the water, and a tethered mobile underwater pod that can be deployed to depths of several meters. The pod is controlled remotely in three dimensions and transmits video feed and sensor data via the floating multirotor back to the user. The ‚dual-robot‛ approach considerably simplifies robotic underwater monitoring, while also taking advantage of the fact that multirotors can travel long distances, fly over obstacles, carry payloads and manoeuvre through difficult terrain, while submersible robots are ideal for underwater sampling or manipulation. The presented system can perform challenging tasks which would otherwise require boats or submarines. The ability to collect aquatic images, samples and metrics will be invaluable for ecology and aquatic research, supporting our understanding of local climate in difficult-to-access environments.
Dams B, Sareh S, Zhang K, et al., 2020, Aerial additive building manufacturing: three-dimensional printing of polymer structures using drones, Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers: Construction Materials, Vol: 173, Pages: 3-14, ISSN: 1747-650X
This paper describes the first aerial additive building manufacturing system developed to create and repair civil engineering structures remotely using polymers extruded from unmanned aerial robots (drones). The structural potential of three commercially available expanding polyurethane foams of varying density (LD40, Reprocell 300 and Reprocell 500), and their feasibility for deposition using an autonomous flying dual-syringe device is described. Test specimens consisting of one and two layers, with horizontal and vertical interfaces, were mechanically tested both parallel and perpendicular to the direction of expansion. LD40 specimens exhibited ductile failure in flexural tests and provided evidence that the interfaces between layers were not necessarily regions of weaknesses. Hand-mixed specimens of Reprocell 500 possessed compressive strengths comparable to those of concrete and flexural strengths similar to those of the lower range of timber, though they exhibited brittle failure. There are challenges to be faced with matching the performance of hand-mixed specimens using an autonomous dual-syringe deposition device, primarily concerning the rheological properties of the material following extrusion. However, the device successfully imported and deposited two liquid components, of varying viscosity, and maintained correct mixing ratios. This work has demonstrated the structural and operational feasibility of polyurethane foam as a viable structural material for remote three-dimensional printing using drones.
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