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Here we experimentally quantify the effects of wing morphological and inertial parameters on flapping flight performance. Through running at-scale, passive pitching experiments with different wing designs, we compare the relative importance of wing inertia, wing shape, and wing-actuation pairing. We find wing inertia strongly influences the coupling between stroke and pitch dynamics, which directly...
Overhead transmission lines integral assessment problem is considered in the paper. Failures diagnostic and analysis procedure based on artificial intelligence techniques is presented. The tool set for integral diagnostic of overhead lines and infrastructure is established. The possibility of the present tools arrangement on the base of land and air based autonomous mobile robots is offered. The concept...
This paper reviews the motivation, development, and use of underwater robotic vehicles designed for use in ice-covered waters, with special attention paid to the navigation systems employed for under-ice deployments. The scientific need for routine access under fixed and moving ice by underwater robotic vehicles is briefly reviewed. The challenges of under-ice vehicle navigation are summarized. The...
In this paper we face the challenging problem of takeoff and landing on sloped surfaces for a VTOL aerial vehicle. We define the general conditions for a safe and robust maneuver and we analyze and compare two classes of methods to fulfill these conditions: free-flight vs. passively-tethered. Focusing on the less studied tethered method, we show its advantages w.r.t. the free-flight method thanks...
Inspection of the structural health of the bridge column is very important task but near-water surface region is dangerous for structural health monitoring robots due to water tides and spray. The unmanned surface vehicle with vertical thrusting function was developed to attach bridge column regardless of the surface status or material for close inspection and minimizing turbulence or external flow...
Force feedback is a powerful sensory cue that can provide a user, remotely teleoperating a vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) aerial robotic vehicle, with an enhanced perception of the robot motion and interaction with the local environment. The accepted framework for mobile vehicle teleoperation, inspired by decades of research into manipulator teleoperation, maps joystick displacements to vehicle...
Remotely Operated Vehicles (ROVs) are a proven tool for performing highly-capable marine operations ranging from science investigations to industrial applications. While industry-grade ROVs can support an impressive array of functions, they can be very expensive and complex. As such, they are often inappropriate for use in educational programs where functional requirements are limited but low-cost...
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) employs many technologies in its diverse missions. NOAA challenges include monitoring the atmosphere and predicting the weather, charting the Nation's waterways, protecting marine sanctuaries, managing fisheries resources and exploring and understanding our ocean planet. In an era of strained budgets and declining availability of conventional...
Robotic chemical plume tracing is a growing area of research, with envisioned real-world applications including pollution tracking, search and rescue, and ecosystem identification. However, following a chemical signal in the water is not an easy task due to the nature of chemical transport and to limitations in sensing and communication. In this paper, we propose an approach for near-surface waterborne...
We often take Web connectivity for granted. This can be the case in our houses where we rely on more and more devices that connect to the Internet and exchange information with remote servers or other nearby devices around using cheap Wi-Fi radios. However, the world remains for the most part disconnected. There are still uncountable remote areas where connecting to the Internet is still a big challenge...
Unmanned Maritime Vehicles (UMVs) have been under development, especially with US Navy research funds, for decades. However, meaningful advances in the commercial sector have only been seen in the past 20 years. In 1997 Bluefin Robotics was formed out of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Sea Grant College Program Autonomous Underwater Vehicle Lab. Since then many other companies have developed...
This paper addresses a three-dimensional (3D) reconstruction of a flooded open pit mine with an autonomous surface vehicle (ASV) and unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV). The ROAZ USV and the Otus UAV were used to provide the underwater bathymetric map and aerial 3D reconstruction based from image data. This work was performed within the context of the European research project VAMOS with the objective of...
The present paper describes the development of geophysical navigation (GN) methods for small, affordable underwater robotic vehicles. The proposed GN methods includes a classical, bathymetric-based terrain-aided navigation (TAN) approach, a magnetic-based geophysical navigation solution (MAGNAV), and an integration of both methods (TAN-MAGNAV). Due to insufficient topographic features in the adopted...
Clean water is a natural resource that is crucial for life but has very little protection. This was exemplified by the Gold King Mine spill on August 7, 2015, in which three million gallons of acidic mine drainage was released into the head waters of the Animas River. The Animas River is the source for five water supply systems, providing drinking water for tens of thousands of people and irrigation...
Analytical model by considering the kinematics, dynamics, and energetics of the trenching machine is adopted and proposed to design an underwater chain trenching machine at UCRC-KIOST. In this paper, parameter study and sensitivity analysis is conducted to show how the variations of operational and geometric parameters, as well as cutting tools and material condition affect the forces, moment, weight,...
This paper presents a new concept for a deep sea lander system combining both sea bottom permanence characteristics with autonomous repositioning functionalities and efficient ascent/descent motion in the water column.
For the ONR-funded Heterogeneous Adaptive Maritime Mobile Expeditionary Robots (HAMMER) project, we work on cooperative autonomy for a fleet of unmanned vehicles working together in the aerial, water surface, and underwater domains. Each of these systems work well independently, but our goal is to integrate their performance into one system of vehicles that can safely perform cooperative tasks. The...
In April 2016, NTNU, FFI, Kongsberg Seatex, LSTS and Maritime Robotics set up an experiment to explore their capability to combine the research vessel Gunnerus, the AUV Hugin, the UAV X8 and the USV Mariner in a network of heterogeneous unmanned vehicles. Communication, manoeuvring, onboard processing and operational complexity are essential components in such networks. To provide communication the...
Underwater communication and robot technologies have grown rapidly in the last decade. Systems made of underwater unmanned vehicles have moved from single vehicle deployments to systems comprising teams of assets. As of today the possibility to support cooperation and interoperability of heterogeneous platforms is a key issue. The objective of this paper is to present the SUNRISE [1] approach to overcome...
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