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Collaborating Authors

 Morando, Luca


Trajectory Planning and Control for Differentially Flat Fixed-Wing Aerial Systems

arXiv.org Artificial Intelligence

-- Efficient real-time trajectory planning and control for fixed-wing unmanned aerial vehicles is challenging due to their non-holonomic nature, complex dynamics, and the additional uncertainties introduced by unknown aerodynamic effects. In this paper, we present a fast and efficient real-time trajectory planning and control approach for fixed-wing unmanned aerial vehicles, leveraging the differential flatness property of fixed-wing aircraft in coordinated flight conditions to generate dynamically feasible trajectories. The approach provides the ability to continuously replan trajectories, which we show is useful to dynamically account for the curvature constraint as the aircraft advances along its path. In recent years, the deployment of small Fixed-Wing Unmanned Aerial V ehicles (FW-UA Vs) has significantly increased across various applications, including environmental monitoring [1], low-altitude surveillance [2], and support for first responders in search and rescue operations [3]. Their popularity is primarily due to their superior endurance, extended operational range, and lower energy consumption compared to traditional V ertical Take-Off and Landing (VTOL) platforms like quadrotors. Since FW-UA Vs cannot hover in place or execute sharp turns and must maintain continuous motion to remain airborne, accurate trajectory planning and precise tracking are essential for their safe operations.


Spatial Assisted Human-Drone Collaborative Navigation and Interaction through Immersive Mixed Reality

arXiv.org Artificial Intelligence

Aerial robots have the potential to play a crucial role in assisting humans with complex and dangerous tasks. Nevertheless, the future industry demands innovative solutions to streamline the interaction process between humans and drones to enable seamless collaboration and efficient co-working. In this paper, we present a novel tele-immersive framework that promotes cognitive and physical collaboration between humans and robots through Mixed Reality (MR). This framework incorporates a novel bi-directional spatial awareness and a multi-modal virtual-physical interaction approaches. The former seamlessly integrates the physical and virtual worlds, offering bidirectional egocentric and exocentric environmental representations. The latter, leveraging the proposed spatial representation, further enhances the collaboration combining a robot planning algorithm for obstacle avoidance with a variable admittance control. This allows users to issue commands based on virtual forces while maintaining compatibility with the environment map. We validate the proposed approach by performing several collaborative planning and exploration tasks involving a drone and an user equipped with a MR headset.