The Distributed Flight Array: Design, implementation, and analysis of a modular vertical take-off and landing vehicle

Oung, Raymond; D’Andrea, Raffaello

doi:10.1177/0278364913501212

Cited by 72 publications

(55 citation statements)

References 50 publications

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“…For only a few systems, modules operate freely in 3-D environments, such as in fluids [10], [11], [12], [13], [14], [15], [16] or in the air [17]. The modular structures they form, however, are either 1-D [10], [13], [16], 2-D [17], or not selfpropelling [11], [12], [14], [15]. To our knowledge, at present no modular robot platform supports 3-D structures that selfpropel freely in 3-D.…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Modular Hydraulic Propulsion: A robot that moves by routing fluid through itself

Doyle

Xin-yu

et al. 2016

2016 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA)

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Abstract-This paper introduces the concept of Modular Hydraulic Propulsion, in which a modular robot that operates in a fluid environment moves by routing the fluid through itself. The robot's modules represent sections of a hydraulics network. Each module can move fluid between any of its faces. The modules (network sections) can be rearranged into arbitrary topologies. We propose a decentralized motion controller, which does not require modules to communicate, compute, nor store information during run-time. We use 3-D simulations to compare the performance of this controller to that of a centralized controller with full knowledge of the task. We also detail the design and fabrication of six 2-D prototype modules, which float in a water tank. Results of systematic experiments show that the decentralized controller, despite its simplicity, reliably steers modular robots towards a light source. Modular Hydraulic Propulsion could offer new solutions to problems requiring reconfigurable systems to move precisely in 3-D, such as inspection of pipes, vascular systems or other confined spaces.

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Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Modular Hydraulic Propulsion: A robot that moves by routing fluid through itself

Doyle

Xin-yu

et al. 2016

2016 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA)

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“…Each agent of this testbed is capable of full-duplex communication at 115.2 kbps with up to six connected agents and carries out the proposed algorithm together with a variety of other processes [15] on a single 32-bit 72 MHz microcontroller. All inter-agent communication is performed in an unreliable, but frequent manner using the user datagram protocol (UDP) [16].…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This information can be obtained prior to flying; agents share information in order to agree upon a unique coordinate frame and compute for themselves the position of their distance measurement sensor with respect to this coordinate frame [15]. To solve the set of equations (11) in a distributed way, where each agent only communicates with its immediate neighbour(s), we borrow results from [17] and re-write the least squares solution (11) aŝ…”

Section: Distributed Altitude and Tilt Estimationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Asynchronous implementation of a distributed average consensus algorithm

Kriegleder

Oung

D’Andrea

2013

2013 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems

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Abstract-This paper discusses distributed average consensus in the context of a distributed embedded system with multiple agents connected through a communication network. Adversities such as switching of network topologies, agents joining or leaving the network, and communication link creation or failure may arise in these systems. To address these difficulties, we propose an asynchronous implementation of a distributed average consensus algorithm that has the following properties: (1) unbiased average, (2) homogeneous implementation, (3) robustness to network adversities, (4) dynamic consensus, and (5) well-defined tuning parameters. We demonstrate an application of the implementation on a specific distributed embedded system, the Distributed Flight Array, where we solve two average consensus problems to estimate altitude and tilt of the vehicle from multiple distance measurements.

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“…In the former case, the software (and to a more limited extent, the hardware) present on these systems must be able to self-organize and adapt to changing conditions with a degree of flexibility that existing self-adaptive middleware do not support. Recent work has headed in this direction [71], but, again, these efforts opt for making a very specific application work instead of investigating the design primitives and programming constructs that will be needed to support robotic adaptation in general. Neural interfaces: Your mobile and your brain get together.…”

Section: Challenges (And Opportunities) Aheadmentioning

confidence: 99%

Software engineering for mobility: reflecting on the past, peering into the future

Picco

Julien

Murphy

et al. 2014

Future of Software Engineering Proceedings

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At the end of the second millennium, mobility was a hot research topic. Physical mobility of devices was becoming commonplace with the availability of cheap wireless cards, the first attempts to transform phones into personal do-it-all devices were beginning to appear, and mobile ad hoc networks were attracting a huge interest from many research communities. Logical mobility of code was still going strong as a design option for distributed systems, with the Java language providing some of the ready-to-use building blocks. In 2000, when we put forth a research "roadmap" for software engineering for mobility, the challenges posed by this dynamic scenario were many.A decade and a half later, many things have changed. Mobility is no longer exotic: we juggle multiple personal devices every day while on the move, plus we grab and update applications on a whim from virtual stores. Indeed, some trends and visions we considered in our original paper materialized, while others faded, disappeared, or morphed into something else. Moreover, some players unexpected at the time (e.g., cloud computing and online social networks) appeared on the scene as game changers.In this paper we revisit critically our original vision, reflecting on the past and peering into the future of the lively and exciting research area of mobility. Further, we ask ourselves to what extent the software engineering community is still interested in taking up the challenges mobility bears.

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The Distributed Flight Array: Design, implementation, and analysis of a modular vertical take-off and landing vehicle

Cited by 72 publications

References 50 publications

Modular Hydraulic Propulsion: A robot that moves by routing fluid through itself

Modular Hydraulic Propulsion: A robot that moves by routing fluid through itself

Asynchronous implementation of a distributed average consensus algorithm

Software engineering for mobility: reflecting on the past, peering into the future

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