Electroaerodynamic propulsion, where force is produced via the momentum-transferring collisions between accelerated ions and neutral air molecules, is a promising alternative mechanism for flight at the micro air vehicle scale due to its silent and solid-state nature. Its relatively low efficiency, however, has thus far precluded its use in a power-autonomous vehicle; leveraging the efficiency benefits of operation close to a fixed surface is a potential solution. While proximity effects like the ground and ceiling effects have been well-investigated for rotorcraft and flapping wing micro air vehicles, they have not been for electroaerodynamically-propelled fliers. In this work, we investigate the change in performance when centimeter-scale thrusters are operated close to a "ceiling" plane about the inlet. We show a surprising and, until now, unreported effect; a major electrostatic attractive component, analogous to electroadhesive pressure but instead mediated by a stable atmospheric plasma. The isolated electrostatic and fluid dynamic components of the ceiling effect are shown for different distances from the plane and for different materials. We further show that a flange attached to the inlet can vastly increase both components of force. A peak efficiency improvement of 600% is shown close to the ceiling. This work points the way towards effective use of the ceiling effect for power autonomous vehicles, extending flight duration, or as a perching mechanism.

This paper proposes a feature-based Visual Servoing (VS) method for insertion task skills. A camera mounted on the robot's end-effector provides the pose relative to a cylinder (hole), allowing a contact-free and damage-free search of the hole and avoiding uncertainties emerging when the pose is computed via robot kinematics. Two points located on the hole's principal axis and three mutually orthogonal planes defining the flange's reference frame are associated with the pose of the hole and the flange, respectively. The proposed VS drives to zero the distance between the two points and the three planes aligning the robot's flange with the hole's direction. Compared with conventional VS where the Jacobian is difficult to compute in practice, the proposed featured-based uses a Jacobian easily calculated from the measured hole pose. Furthermore, the feature-based VS design considers the robot's maximum cartesian velocity. The VS method is implemented in an industrial robot and the experimental results support its usefulness.

This study evaluates the application of a discrete action space reinforcement learning method (Q-learning) to the continuous control problem of robot inverted pendulum balancing. To speed up the learning process and to overcome technical difficulties related to the direct learning on the real robotic system, the learning phase is performed in simulation environment. A mathematical model of the system dynamics is implemented, deduced by curve fitting on data acquired from the real system. The proposed approach demonstrated feasible, featuring its application on a real world robot that learned to balance an inverted pendulum. This study also reinforces and demonstrates the importance of an accurate representation of the physical world in simulation to achieve a more efficient implementation of reinforcement learning algorithms in real world, even when using a discrete action space algorithm to control a continuous action.