Palm sized legged robots show promise for military and civilian applications, including exploration of hazardous or difficult to reach places, search and rescue, espionage, and battlefield reconnaissance. However, they also face many technical obstacles, includingbut not limited toactuator performance, weight constraints, processing power, and power density. This paper presents an overview of s...

From a dynamic system point of view, bat locomotion stands out among other forms of flight. During a large part of bat wingbeat cycle the moving body is not in a static equilibrium. This is in sharp contrast to what we observe in other simpler forms of flight such as insects, which stay at their static equilibrium. Encouraged by biological examinations that have revealed bats exhibit periodic a...

The paper deals with the dynamic modeling of bio-inspired robots with soft appendages as flying insect-like or swimming fish-like robots. In order to model such soft systems, we here propose to exploit the Mobile Multibody System framework introduced in [1], [2], [3]. In such a framework, the robot is considered as a tree-like structure of rigid bodies whose the joint evolution is governed by s...

For aerial robots, maintaining a high vantage point for an extended time is crucial in many applications. However, available on-board power and mechanical fatigue constrain their flight time, especially for smaller, battery-powered aircraft. Perching on elevated structures is a biologically inspired approach to overcome these limitations. Previous perching robots have required specific material...

This technical brief presents a refined slabbing method, originally used for free-flying robots, for finding efficient paths for nonholonomic robots. Our method takes kinematic constraints and reversal maneuvers into account. We create orientation levels for each orientation configuration of the robot. The slopes of slabbing lines in each orientation level match the orientation of a robot in th...

The paper describes recent design and development efforts in DLR`s robotics lab towards a new generation of “mechatronic” ultra-light weight robots with articulated hands and high-level remote programmability. The design of fully sensorized robot joints with complete state feedback and the underlying mechanisms are outlined. The second light-weight arm generation is available now the third is i...

We aim at developing autonomous miniature hovering flying robots capable of navigating in unstructured GPSdenied environments. A major challenge is the miniaturization of the embedded sensors and processors allowing such platforms to fly autonomously. In this paper, we propose a novel ego-motion estimation algorithm for hovering robots equipped with inertial and optic-flow sensors that runs in ...

In this paper we discuss how a network of sensors and robots can cooperate to solve important robotics problems such as localization and navigation. We use a robot to localize sensor nodes, and we then use these localized nodes to navigate robots and humans through the sensorized space. We explore these novel ideas with results from two large-scale sensor network and robot experiments involving...

Modular self-assembling on-orbit robots have the potential to reduce mission costs, increase reliability, and permit on-orbit repair and refueling. Modules with a variety of specialized capabilities would self-assemble from orbiting inventories. The assembled modules would then share resources such as power and sensors. As each free-flying module carries its own attitude control actuators, the ...

Sensing in space robotic systems is expensive but necessary to compensate for imprecise actuation, disturbances, and modeling errors. It has been shown that force/torque sensors can identify actuation efforts including joint torques and reaction jet forces for multi-manipulator free-flying space robots and greatly improves system precision. This paper studies the minimum number of sensors which...