How to endow aerial robots with the ability to operate in close proximity remains an open problem. The core challenges lie in the propulsion system's dual-task requirement: generating manipulation forces while simultaneously counteracting gravity. These competing demands create dynamic coupling effects during physical interactions. Furthermore, rotor-induced airflow disturbances critically undermine operational reliability. Although fully-actuated unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) alleviate dynamic coupling effects via six-degree-of-freedom (6-DoF) force-torque decoupling, existing implementations fail to address the aerodynamic interference between drones and environments. They also suffer from oversized designs, which compromise maneuverability and limit their applications in various operational scenarios. To address these limitations, we present FLOAT Drone (FuLly-actuated cOaxial Aerial roboT), a novel fully-actuated UAV featuring two key structural innovations. By integrating control surfaces into fully-actuated systems for the first time, we significantly suppress lateral airflow disturbances during operations. Furthermore, a coaxial dual-rotor configuration enables a compact size while maintaining high hovering efficiency. Through dynamic modeling, we have developed hierarchical position and attitude controllers that support both fully-actuated and underactuated modes. Experimental validation through comprehensive real-world experiments confirms the system's functional capabilities in close-proximity operations.

Avian-informed drones feature morphing wing and tail surfaces, enhancing agility and adaptability in flight. Despite their large potential, realising their full capabilities remains challenging due to the lack of generalized control strategies accommodating their large degrees of freedom and cross-coupling effects between their control surfaces. Here we propose a new body-rate controller for avian-informed drones that uses all available actuators to control the motion of the drone. The method exhibits robustness against physical perturbations, turbulent airflow, and even loss of certain actuators mid-flight. Furthermore, wing and tail morphing is leveraged to enhance energy efficiency at 8m/s, 10m/s and 12m/s using in-flight Bayesian optimization. The resulting morphing configurations yield significant gains across all three speeds of up to 11.5% compared to non-morphing configurations and display a strong resemblance to avian flight at different speeds. This research lays the groundwork for the development of autonomous avian-informed drones that operate under diverse wind conditions, emphasizing the role of morphing in improving energy efficiency.

This paper presents a solution for the state estimation and control problems for a class of unconventional vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) UAVs operating in forward-flight conditions. A tightly-coupled state estimation approach is used to estimate the aircraft navigation states, sensor biases, and the wind velocity. State estimation is done within a matrix Lie group framework using the Invariant Extended Kalman Filter (IEKF), which offers several advantages compared to standard multiplicative EKFs traditionally used in aerospace and robotics problems. An SO(3)- based attitude controller is employed, leading to a single attitude control law without a separate sideslip control loop. A control allocator is used to determine how to use multiple, possibly redundant, actuators to produce the desired control moments. The wind velocity estimates are used in the attitude controller and the control allocator to improve performance. A numerical example is considered using a sample VTOL tailsitter-type UAV with four control surfaces. Monte-Carlo simulations demonstrate robustness of the proposed control and estimation scheme to various initial conditions, noise levels, and flight trajectories.

We designed and constructed an A-sized base autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV), augmented with a stack of modular and extendable hardware and software, including autonomy, navigation, control and high fidelity simulation capabilities (A-size stands for the standard sonobuoy form factor, with a maximum diameter of 124 mm). Subsequently, we extended this base vehicle with a novel tuna-inspired morphing fin payload module (referred to as the Morpheus AUV), to achieve good directional stability and exceptional maneuverability; properties that are highly desirable for rigid hull AUVs, but are presently difficult to achieve because they impose contradictory requirements. The morphing fin payload allows the base AUV to dynamically change its stability-maneuverability qualities by using morphing fins, which can be deployed, deflected and retracted, as needed. The base vehicle and Morpheus AUV were both extensively field tested in-water in the Charles river, Massachusetts, USA; by conducting hundreds of hours of operations over a period of two years. The maneuvering capability of the Morpheus AUV was evaluated with and without the use of morphing fins to quantify the performance improvement. The Morpheus AUV was able to showcase an exceptional turning rate of around 25-35 deg/s. A maximum turn rate improvement of around 35% - 50% was gained through the use of morphing fins.

A reduced order model of a generic submarine is presented. Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) results are used to create and validate a model that includes depth dependence and the effect of waves on the craft. The model and the procedure to obtain its coefficients are discussed, and examples of the data used to obtain the model coefficients are presented. An example of operation following a complex path is presented and results from the reduced order model are compared to those from an equivalent CFD calculation. The controller implemented to complete these maneuvers is also presented.

The optimal stiffness for soft swimming robots depends on swimming speed, which means no single stiffness can maximise efficiency in all swimming conditions. Tunable stiffness would produce an increased range of high-efficiency swimming speeds for robots with flexible propulsors and enable soft control surfaces for steering underwater vehicles. We propose and demonstrate a method for tunable soft robotic stiffness using inflatable rubber tubes to stiffen a silicone foil through pressure and second moment of area change. We achieved double the effective stiffness of the system for an input pressure change from 0 to 0.8 bar and 2 J energy input. We achieved a resonant amplitude gain of 5 to 7 times the input amplitude and tripled the high-gain frequency range comparedto a foil with fixed stiffness. These results show that changing second moment of area is an energy effective approach tot unable-stiffness robots.

Shared libraries encourage code reuse, promote consistency across teams, and ultimately improve product velocity and quality. But application developers are still left to choose the right libraries, figure out how to correctly configure them, and wire everything together. By preinstalling and preconfiguring libraries, application frameworks provide a simplified developer experience and even greater consistency, albeit at the cost of some flexibility. By owning the entire application life cycle, frameworks go beyond a mere collection of libraries. Guaranteed framework behavior can scale development--for example, by avoiding the need for in-depth security or privacy code reviews of every application. The cross-team and cross-language consistency provided by frameworks is also a necessary foundation for higher-level automation and smart systems. This article offers an overview of the central aspects of frameworks, then dives deeper into their benefits, the trade-offs they entail, and the most important features we recommend implementing. Finally, we present a practical application of frameworks at Google: how developing a microservices platform allowed Google to break up its monolithic code base, and how frameworks enabled that change. A framework is, in many ways, similar to a shared library and has similar benefits. For Google, two technical principles help to distinguish a framework from a library: inversion of control and extensibility.

Before continuing to describe what NASA accomplished with its witty IFCS, I will provide you a brief introduction to some important concepts and the benefits of the "fly-by-wire" systems. In a "fly-by-wire" system, the movements of the pilot's flight controls, also known as inceptors, are converted into electronic signals that are transmitted by wires -- thus the name "fly-by-wire ". Using these electrical signals, the Flight Control Computers (FCC) determine how the actuator of each of the control surfaces should move to meet the required aircraft handling qualities criteria. Over time, the traditional mechanical linkages between the pilot's controls and the aerodynamic control surfaces like those of the Flyer have been substitued by the electronic interfaces and computers of the modern "fly-by-wire" systems, although still nowadays traditional mechanical flight control systems can be found in conventional light aircraft. Thanks to the digital "fly-by-wire" systems, the pilot's workload in modern aircraft has decreased considerably, as many critical tasks have been delegated to the computer, like the automatic stabilization of the aircraft.

Structural health monitoring is a condition-based field of study utilised to monitor infrastructure, via sensing systems. It is therefore used in the field of aerospace engineering to assist in monitoring the health of aerospace structures. A difficulty however is that in structural health monitoring the data input is usually from sensor arrays, which results in data which are highly redundant and correlated, an area in which traditional two-way matrix approaches have had difficulty in deconstructing and interpreting. Newer methods involving tensor analysis allow us to analyse this multi-way structural data in a coherent manner. In our approach, we demonstrate the usefulness of tensor-based learning coupled with for damage detection, on a novel $N$-DoF Lagrangian aeroservoelastic model.

Be it the Avatar, Minority Report or Iron Man, there is a common element that you can notice in most science fiction films. Very hardly can you see a futuristic narration where characters don't smoothly interact with digital content that surrounds them. With just a swipe or a gesture, you see people accessing amazing levels of information regardless of the surrounding they are in. This kind of smooth interaction with the digital world through the sense of touch is something that could soon become a norm in our day to day life. Such has been the growth of Haptic Technology.