Publications associées à To tread or not to tread: comparison between water treading and conventional flapping wing kinematics

Gas Sensing with Rotary-Wing Nano Aerial Vehicles

Harmful chemical compounds are released daily in warehouses, chemical plants and during environmental emergencies. Their uncontrolled dispersion contributes to the pollution of the atmosphere and threatens human and animal lives. When gas leaks occur, the ...

EPFL2024

Lumped Drag Model Identification and Real-Time External Force Detection for Rotary-Wing Micro Aerial Vehicles

Alcherio Martinoli, Lucas Cédric Wälti

This work focuses on understanding and identifying the drag forces applied to a rotary-wing Micro Aerial Vehicle (MAV). We propose a lumped drag model that concisely describes the aerodynamical forces the MAV is subject to, with a minimal set of parameters ...

IEEE2024

Method for wind harvesting and wind rejection in flying drones

Dario Floreano, Victor Casas Rochel, Nathan Samuel Müller, Charalampos Vourtsis, William John Stewart

The present invention concerns a method of manoeuvring a vertical take-off and landing, unmanned aerial drone (100) comprising at least an aerodynamic surface (101), wherein, during a flight of the drone, the aerodynamic surface generates lift and/or drag ...

2024

Distributed Predictive Formation Control of Autonomous Rotary-Wing Micro Aerial Vehicles

Izzet Kagan Erünsal

This doctoral thesis navigates the complex landscape of motion coordination and formation control within teams of rotary-wing Micro Aerial Vehicles (MAVs). Prompted by the intricate demands of real-world applications such as search and rescue or surveillan ...

EPFL2024

Accurate and agile flight with winged drones

Valentin Wüest

Drones hold promise to assist in civilian tasks. To realize this application, future drones must operate within large cities, covering large distances while navigating within cluttered urban landscapes. The increased efficiency of winged drones over rotary ...

EPFL2024

VDM-based navigation for Delta-wing UAVs: Models, calibration, implementation

Pasquale Longobardi

Autonomous navigation of small UAVs is typically based on the integration of inertial navigation systems (INS) together with global navigation satellite systems (GNSS). However, GNSS signals can face various forms of interference affecting their continuous ...

EPFL2024

The effects of kinematics, flexibility, and planform on the vortex formation and aerodynamic performance of flapping wing flight

Alexander Gehrke

In this thesis, the aerodynamic challenges in flapping wing flight are addressed. In particular, the effects of different wing kinematics, flexibilities, and planforms on the the leading edge vortex development and aerodynamic performance are investigated. ...

EPFL2023

Wing and tail morphing in birds and drones

Enrico Ajanic

To aid humans in civilian tasks, future drones will have to operate in large cities that abound with difficult flight conditions such as confined spaces, obstacles, and turbulent air. Such drones must cruise efficiently to cover vast distances fast and als ...

EPFL2023

Earwig-inspired foldable origami wing for micro air vehicle gliding

Jamie Paik, Risa Ishiguro

Foldable wings serve as an effective solution for reducing the size of micro air vehicles (MAVs) during non-flight phases, without compromising the gliding capacity provided by the wing area. Among insects, earwigs exhibit the highest folding ratio in thei ...

Frontiers Media Sa2023

Fluid-structure interactions of bristled wings: the trade-off between weight and drag

Pedro Miguel Nunes Pereira de Almeida Reis, Matteo Pezzulla, Yuexia Luna Lin

The smallest flying insects often have bristled wings resembling feathers or combs. We combined experiments and three-dimensional numerical simulations to investigate the trade-off between wing weight and drag generation. In experiments of bristled strips, ...

Royal Soc2023

Wind Defiant Morphing Drones

Dario Floreano, Victor Casas Rochel, Nathan Samuel Müller, Charalampos Vourtsis, William John Stewart

Intense winds are a challenge for vertical take-off and landing drones with wings. In particular, in the hovering regime, wings are sensitive to wind currents that can be detrimental to their operational and energetic performances. Tail-sitters are particu ...

2023

Vortex shedding from a composite hydrofoil: Experimental evidence of a novel "partial lock-in"

Mohamed Farhat, Qin Wu, Thomas Antoine Nicolas Berger, Yunqing Liu

Lock-in is of great importance in many engineering applications due to its practical implications for structural safety. The influence of composite bend-twist coupling on the wake dynamics and vortex-induced vibration around a carbon fiber composite hydrof ...

Aip Publishing2023

Resilient drones with morphing wings

Charalampos Vourtsis

Winged aerial robots and Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) commonly referred to as winged drones and drones, are increasingly used in a wide range of professional and non-professional applications today, spanning from civilian to military. As a result, they ...

EPFL2023

Identifying aerodynamics of small fixed-wing drones using inertial measurements for model-based navigation

Jan Skaloud, Gabriel François Laupré

The success of drone missions is incumbent on an accurate determination of the drone pose and velocity, which are collectively estimated by fusing iner- tial measurement unit and global navigation satellite system (GNSS) mea- surements. However, during a G ...

2023

Aeroelastic characterisation of a bio-inspired flapping membrane wing

Karen Ann J Mulleners, Alexander Gehrke, Esra Uksul, Jules Ange Philippe Richeux

Natural fliers like bats exploit the complex fluid-structure interaction between their flexible membrane wings and the air with great ease. Yet, replicating and scaling the balance between the structural and fluid-dynamical parameters of unsteady membrane ...

IOP Publishing Ltd2022

How ornithopters can perch autonomously on a branch

Raphael Zufferey

Flapping wings produce lift and thrust in bio-inspired aerial robots, leading to quiet, safe and efficient flight. However, to extend their application scope, these robots must perch and land, a feat widely demonstrated by birds. Despite recent progress, f ...

Nature Portfolio2022

Sharp turning maneuvers with avian-inspired wing and tail morphing

Dario Floreano, Enrico Ajanic, Mir Alikhan Bin Mohammad Feroskhan, Valentin Wüest

Flight in dense environments, such as forests and cities requires drones to perform sharp turns. Although fixed-wing drones are aerodynamically and energetically more efficient than multicopters, they require a comparatively larger area to turn and thus ar ...

2022

Not gone with the wind: Active microscale flight with highly porous bristled wings

Pedro Miguel Nunes Pereira de Almeida Reis, Yuexia Luna Lin

The finesse of sub-millimeter insect flight with comb-like bristled wings raises intriguing questions, not only on fluid-structure interactions (FSI) but also on the mechanical behavior of the underlying, highly porous structures. Farisenkov et al. charact ...

ELSEVIER2022

Observing the Central Arctic Atmosphere and Surface with University of Colorado uncrewed aircraft systems

Julia Schmale, Radiance Flore Aurore Calmer

Over a five-month time window between March and July 2020, scientists deployed two small uncrewed aircraft systems (sUAS) to the central Arctic Ocean as part of legs three and four of the MOSAiC expedition. These sUAS were flown to measure the thermodynami ...

NATURE PORTFOLIO2022

How to Swoop and Grasp Like a Bird With a Passive Claw for a High-Speed Grasping

Matthias Müller, Dario Floreano, Enrico Ajanic, William John Stewart

There is a growing interest in unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) grasping, perching, and interacting with their surroundings by means of claws, arms, hooks, and other appendages. While multirotor vehicles can slowly lower onto a target object and grasp it, w ...

2022