Monocular 3D detection of vehicle and infrastructure sides are two important topics in autonomous driving. Due to diverse sensor installations and focal lengths, researchers are faced with the challenge of constructing algorithms for the two topics based on different prior knowledge. In this paper, by taking into account the diversity of pitch angles and focal lengths, we propose a unified optimization target named normalized depth, which realizes the unification of 3D detection problems for the two sides. Furthermore, to enhance the accuracy of monocular 3D detection, 3D normalized cube depth of obstacle is developed to promote the learning of depth information. We posit that the richness of depth clues is a pivotal factor impacting the detection performance on both the vehicle and infrastructure sides. A richer set of depth clues facilitates the model to learn better spatial knowledge, and the 3D normalized cube depth offers sufficient depth clues. Extensive experiments demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach. Without introducing any extra information, our method, named MonoUNI, achieves state-of-the-art performance on five widely used monocular 3D detection benchmarks, including Rope3D and DAIR-V2X-I for the infrastructure side, KITTI and Waymo for the vehicle side, and nuScenes for the cross-dataset evaluation.

Camera 2 is closer to the vehicle, and the focal length is relatively small.

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) are widely used for aerial photography and remote sensing applications. One of the main challenges is to stitch together multiple images into a single high-resolution image that covers a large area. Featurebased image stitching algorithms are commonly used but can suffer from errors and ambiguities in feature detection and matching. To address this, several approaches have been proposed, including using bundle adjustment techniques or direct image alignment. In this paper, we present a novel method that uses a combination of IMU data and computer vision techniques for stitching images captured by a UAV. Our method involves several steps such as estimating the displacement and rotation of the UAV between consecutive images, correcting for perspective distortion, and computing a homography matrix. We then use a standard image stitching algorithm to align and blend the images together. Our proposed method leverages the additional information provided by the IMU data, corrects for various sources of distortion, and can be easily integrated into existing UAV workflows. Our experiments demonstrate the effectiveness and robustness of our method, outperforming some of the existing feature-based image stitching algorithms in terms of accuracy and reliability, particularly in challenging scenarios such as large displacements, rotations, and variations in camera pose.

Mathematical reasoning is critical for tasks such as precise distance and area computations, trajectory estimations, and spatial analysis in unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) based remote sensing, yet current vision-language models (VLMs) have not been adequately tested in this domain. To address this gap, we introduce AVI-Math, the first benchmark to rigorously evaluate multimodal mathematical reasoning in aerial vehicle imagery, moving beyond simple counting tasks to include domain-specific knowledge in areas such as geometry, logic, and algebra. The dataset comprises 3,773 high-quality vehicle-related questions captured from UAV views, covering 6 mathematical subjects and 20 topics. The data, collected at varying altitudes and from multiple UAV angles, reflects real-world UAV scenarios, ensuring the diversity and complexity of the constructed mathematical problems. In this paper, we benchmark 14 prominent VLMs through a comprehensive evaluation and demonstrate that, despite their success on previous multimodal benchmarks, these models struggle with the reasoning tasks in AVI-Math. Our detailed analysis highlights significant limitations in the mathematical reasoning capabilities of current VLMs and suggests avenues for future research. Furthermore, we explore the use of Chain-of-Thought prompting and fine-tuning techniques, which show promise in addressing the reasoning challenges in AVI-Math. Our findings not only expose the limitations of VLMs in mathematical reasoning but also offer valuable insights for advancing UAV-based trustworthy VLMs in real-world applications. The code, and datasets will be released at https://github.com/VisionXLab/avi-math

The flight time of multirotor unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) is typically constrained by their high power consumption. Tethered power systems present a viable solution to extend flight times while maintaining the advantages of multirotor UAVs, such as hover capability and agility. This paper addresses the critical aspect of cable selection for tether-powered multirotor UAVs, considering both hover and forward flight. Existing research often overlooks the trade-offs between cable mass, power losses, and system constraints. We propose a novel methodology to optimize cable selection, accounting for thrust requirements and power efficiency across various flight conditions. The approach combines physics-informed modeling with system identification to combine hover and forward flight dynamics, incorporating factors such as motor efficiency, tether resistance, and aerodynamic drag. This work provides an intuitive and practical framework for optimizing tethered UAV designs, ensuring efficient power transmission and flight performance. Thus allowing for better, safer, and more efficient tethered drones.

--This paper introduces a novel approach for enabling real-time imitation of human head motion by a Nao robot, with a primary focus on elevating human-robot interactions. By using the robust capabilities of the MediaPipe as a computer vision library and the DeepFace as an emotion recognition library, this research endeavors to capture the subtleties of human head motion, including blink actions and emotional expressions, and seamlessly incorporate these indicators into the robot's responses. The result is a comprehensive framework which facilitates precise head imitation within human-robot interactions, utilizing a closed-loop approach that involves gathering real-time feedback from the robot's imitation performance. This feedback loop ensures a high degree of accuracy in modeling head motion, as evidenced by an impressive R2 score of 96.3 for pitch and 98.9 for yaw. Notably, the proposed approach holds promise in improving communication for children with autism, offering them a valuable tool for more effective interaction. In essence, proposed work explores the integration of real-time head imitation and real-time emotion recognition to enhance human-robot interactions, with potential benefits for individuals with unique communication needs. The field of robotics has come a long way in recent years, with significant advancements in the development of humanoid robots.

The capability of effectively moving on complex terrains such as sand and gravel can empower our robots to robustly operate in outdoor environments, and assist with critical tasks such as environment monitoring, search-and-rescue, and supply delivery. Inspired by the Mount Lyell salamander's ability to curl its body into a loop and effectively roll down {\Revision hill slopes}, in this study we develop a sand-rolling robot and investigate how its locomotion performance is governed by the shape of its body. We experimentally tested three different body shapes: Hexagon, Quadrilateral, and Triangle. We found that Hexagon and Triangle can achieve a faster rolling speed on sand, but exhibited more frequent failures of getting stuck. Analysis of the interaction between robot and sand revealed the failure mechanism: the deformation of the sand produced a local ``sand incline'' underneath robot contact segments, increasing the effective region of supporting polygon (ERSP) and preventing the robot from shifting its center of mass (CoM) outside the ERSP to produce sustainable rolling. Based on this mechanism, a highly-simplified model successfully captured the critical body pitch for each rolling shape to produce sustained rolling on sand, and informed design adaptations that mitigated the locomotion failures and improved robot speed by more than 200$\%$. Our results provide insights into how locomotors can utilize different morphological features to achieve robust rolling motion across deformable substrates.

-- T ailsitter aircraft attract considerable interest due to their capabilities of both agile hover and high speed forward flight. However, traditional tailsitters that use aerodynamic control surfaces face the challenge of limited control effectiveness and associated actuator saturation during vertical flight and transitions. Conversely, tailsitters relying solely on tilting rotors have the drawback of insufficient roll control authority in forward flight. This paper proposes a tilt-rotor tailsitter aircraft with both elevons and tilting rotors as a promising solution. By implementing a cascaded weighted least squares (WLS) based incremental nonlinear dynamic inversion (INDI) controller, the drone successfully achieved autonomous waypoint tracking in outdoor experiments at a cruise airspeed of 16 m/s, including transitions between forward flight and hover without actuator saturation. Wind tunnel experiments confirm improved roll control compared to tilt-rotor-only configurations, while comparative outdoor flight tests highlight the vehicle's superior control over elevon-only designs during critical phases such as vertical descent and transitions. Finally, we also show that the tilt-rotors allow for an autonomous takeoff and landing with a unique pivoting capability that demonstrates stability and robustness under wind disturbances. Index T erms-- VTOL aircraft, tailsitter UA V, incremental control, tilt rotors, autonomous flight.

This paper presents the UGSim, a simulator for buoyancy-driven gliders, with a LQR control strategy, and a recursive guidance system. Building on the top of the DAVE and the UUVsim, it is designed to address unique challenges that come from the complex hydrodynamic and hydrostatic impacts on buoyancy-driven gliders, which conventional robotics simulators can't deal with. Since distinguishing features of the class of vehicles, general controllers and guidance systems developed for underwater robotics are infeasible. The simulator is provided to accelerate the development and the evaluation of algorithms that would otherwise require expensive and time-consuming operations at sea. It consists of a basic kinetic module, a LQR control module and a recursive guidance module, which allows the user to concentrate on the single problem rather than the whole robotics system and the software infrastructure. We demonstrate the usage of the simulator through an example, loading the configuration of the buoyancy-driven glider named Petrel-II, presenting its dynamics simulation, performances of the control strategy and the guidance system.

In this paper, we investigate the prospects and challenges of sensor suites in achieving autonomous control for flying insect robots (FIRs) weighing less than a gram. FIRs, owing to their minuscule weight and size, offer unparalleled advantages in terms of material cost and scalability. However, their size introduces considerable control challenges, notably high-speed dynamics, restricted power, and limited payload capacity. While there have been notable advancements in developing lightweight sensors, often drawing inspiration from biological systems, no sub-gram aircraft has been able to attain sustained hover without relying on feedback from external sensing such as a motion capture system. The lightest vehicle capable of sustained hover -- the first level of "sensor autonomy" -- is the much larger 28 g Crazyflie. Previous work reported a reduction in size of that vehicle's avionics suite to 187 mg and 21 mW. Here, we report a further reduction in mass and power to only 78.4 mg and 15 mW. We replaced the laser rangefinder with a lighter and more efficient pressure sensor, and built a smaller optic flow sensor around a global-shutter imaging chip. A Kalman Filter (KF) fuses these measurements to estimate the state variables that are needed to control hover: pitch angle, translational velocity, and altitude. Our system achieved performance comparable to that of the Crazyflie's estimator while in flight, with root mean squared errors of 1.573 degrees, 0.186 m/s, and 0.139 m, respectively, relative to motion capture.