Our society is becoming increasingly more dependent on reliable electric power supply. Since power outages cause substantial financial losses to the producers, distributors and also to the consumers of electric power, it is in the common interest to minimize failures on power lines. To detect the defects early and to accordingly schedule the maintenance activities, the distribution networks are...

Self-assembly systems in space are arguably within the reach of today’s technology based on the research and development of self-reconfigurable robots on earth. This paper presents an approach to self-assembly in space by developing (1) a novel design for intelligent and reconfigurable components; (2) the free-flying “intelligent fiber/rope” “match-maker” robots with self-reconfigurable and sel...

This paper proposes an adaptive robust control scheme for free-flying space robots. In order to simply and effectively control free-flying space robots subject t o parameter uncertainty and disturbances, to avoid the measurement of the base(space vehicle) acceleration, and t o eliminate the assumption that the uncertainty bounds must be a priori known in the conventional robust control approach...

This paper addresses a method of non-intrusive local inspection of surface and sub-surface conditions, interfaces, laminations and seals in both space vehicle and ground operations with an integrated suite of imaging sensors during pre-launch operations. It employs an advanced Raman spectrophotometer with additional spectrophe tometers and lidar mounted on a flying robot to constantly monitor t...

This paper deals with the full dynamic modelling and control of a flying architecture called parallel robot (FPR). architecture, which can be seen as whose actuators have been replaced by drones, offers novel possibilities for robotic aerial manipulation. Over last decade, many prototypes developed in field manipulation, like attaching gripper or manipulator to drone. Nevertheless, proposed app...

This book addresses the topic of autonomous flying robots physically interacting with environment under influence wind.

The future construction and maintenance of very large space structures (LSS) such as orbital solar power stations and telescopes will require teams of free-flying space robots. For robots to effectively perform these tasks, they will require knowledge of the structure’s vibrations. Here, a robotic based sensor architecture for the vibration estimation of very large structures is presented. It i...