2,011 research outputs found
A survey on fractional order control techniques for unmanned aerial and ground vehicles
In recent years, numerous applications of science and engineering for modeling and control of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs) systems based on fractional calculus have been realized. The extra fractional order derivative terms allow to optimizing the performance of the systems. The review presented in this paper focuses on the control problems of the UAVs and UGVs that have been addressed by the fractional order techniques over the last decade
Visual servoing of aerial manipulators
The final publication is available at link.springer.comThis chapter describes the classical techniques to control an aerial manipulator by means of visual information and presents an uncalibrated image-based visual servo method to drive the aerial vehicle. The proposed technique has the advantage that it contains mild assumptions about the principal point and skew values of the camera, and it does not require prior knowledge of the focal length, in contrast to traditional image-based approaches.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft
Fast, Autonomous Flight in GPS-Denied and Cluttered Environments
One of the most challenging tasks for a flying robot is to autonomously
navigate between target locations quickly and reliably while avoiding obstacles
in its path, and with little to no a-priori knowledge of the operating
environment. This challenge is addressed in the present paper. We describe the
system design and software architecture of our proposed solution, and showcase
how all the distinct components can be integrated to enable smooth robot
operation. We provide critical insight on hardware and software component
selection and development, and present results from extensive experimental
testing in real-world warehouse environments. Experimental testing reveals that
our proposed solution can deliver fast and robust aerial robot autonomous
navigation in cluttered, GPS-denied environments.Comment: Pre-peer reviewed version of the article accepted in Journal of Field
Robotic
Quadrotor control for persistent surveillance of dynamic environments
Thesis (M.S.)--Boston UniversityThe last decade has witnessed many advances in the field of small scale unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). In particular, the quadrotor has attracted significant attention. Due to its ability to perform vertical takeoff and landing, and to operate in cluttered spaces, the quadrotor is utilized in numerous practical applications, such as reconnaissance and information gathering in unsafe or otherwise unreachable environments.
This work considers the application of aerial surveillance over a city-like environment. The thesis presents a framework for automatic deployment of quadrotors to monitor and react to dynamically changing events. The framework has a hierarchical structure. At the top level, the UAVs perform complex behaviors that satisfy high- level mission specifications. At the bottom level, low-level controllers drive actuators on vehicles to perform the desired maneuvers.
In parallel with the development of controllers, this work covers the implementation of the system into an experimental testbed. The testbed emulates a city using physical objects to represent static features and projectors to display dynamic events occurring on the ground as seen by an aerial vehicle. The experimental platform features a motion capture system that provides position data for UAVs and physical features of the environment, allowing for precise, closed-loop control of the vehicles. Experimental runs in the testbed are used to validate the effectiveness of the developed control strategies
Mechanical Design, Modelling and Control of a Novel Aerial Manipulator
In this paper a novel aerial manipulation system is proposed. The mechanical
structure of the system, the number of thrusters and their geometry will be
derived from technical optimization problems. The aforementioned problems are
defined by taking into consideration the desired actuation forces and torques
applied to the end-effector of the system. The framework of the proposed system
is designed in a CAD Package in order to evaluate the system parameter values.
Following this, the kinematic and dynamic models are developed and an adaptive
backstepping controller is designed aiming to control the exact position and
orientation of the end-effector in the Cartesian space. Finally, the
performance of the system is demonstrated through a simulation study, where a
manipulation task scenario is investigated.Comment: Comments: 8 Pages, 2015 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and
Automation (ICRA '15), Seattle, WA, US
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