Research Summaries

Back Dynamics, Guidance, and Control of Multiple, Physically Interacting, Unmanned Vehicles: Analysis and Experimentation

Fiscal Year 2011
Division Graduate School of Engineering & Applied Science
Department Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering
Investigator(s) Romano, Marcello
Sponsor National University of Singapore (Other)
Summary The project is a joint effort between NUS and NPS in the field of Autonomous Robotic Vehicles. The collaborators proposed to investigate a novel system and concept of operation regarding Autonomous Robotic Vehicles (including aerial or underwater vehicles), with emphasis on the dynamics, guidance and control aspects. Unarmed Aerial Vehicles lack, in general, the capability of physically interacting with the environment and with other vehicles. This capability can be obtained by using robotic manipulators mounted on a "tail-sitter" V-TOL vehicle. This could enable new critical missions (including, for instance, servicing, monitoring, searching and rescuing, and defensive countermeasure). Similar concepts would be also useful for underwater applications. In particular, in order to move toward overcoming the critical lack mentioned above, we propose to study a general system made of autonomous robotic vehicles, such that each vehicle is equipped with at least one robotic manipulator and is able to physically interact with the external environment Besides the interaction with the environment, also the interaction with other vehicles can be possible, enabling the aggregation of multiple vehicles, i.e. the connection of individual vehicles to create a larger system which may be capable of completing missions which overcome the capability of a single vehicle. Furthermore, an aggregated system could have advantages from the point of view of reliability, redundancy, survivability to failure and enemy actions. The proposed study will involve an original combination of analytical-numerical research together with experimental validation on a multiple robotic vehicles testbed.
Keywords
Publications Publications, theses (not shown) and data repositories will be added to the portal record when information is available in FAIRS and brought back to the portal
Data Publications, theses (not shown) and data repositories will be added to the portal record when information is available in FAIRS and brought back to the portal