The significant differences in the physical properties of air and water pose a substantial challenge for the development of hybrid aerial-aquatic vehicle (HAAV), which leading to increased prototype size, heavier thrusters, and reduced efficiency or under-actuation in one of the mediums. This letter introduces “WuKong”, a HAAV with a simple structure, compact size, and high maneuverability. WuKong has a maximum width of only 300 mm in one dimension, with 2.48 thrust-to-weight ratio. Its operational range spans 20 m in the air and 3 m underwater, enabling seamless cross-domain maneuvers. These capabilities are attributed to the use of separate thrusters for aerial and aquatic, in conjunction with the proposed cross-domain hybrid control framework, and the incremental nonlinear dynamic inversion (INDI)-based underwater attitude control law. Through simulations and field experiments, WuKong's cross-domain transition capability and the underwater maneuverability performance are demonstrated. Our development provides a practical solution for HAAV applications and offers a platform for subsequent HAAV collaborative tasks.
{"title":"WuKong: Design, Modeling and Control of a Compact Flexible Hybrid Aerial-Aquatic Vehicle","authors":"Yufan Liu;Cheng Li;Junjie Li;Zemin Lin;Wei Meng;Fumin Zhang","doi":"10.1109/LRA.2024.3521659","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/LRA.2024.3521659","url":null,"abstract":"The significant differences in the physical properties of air and water pose a substantial challenge for the development of hybrid aerial-aquatic vehicle (HAAV), which leading to increased prototype size, heavier thrusters, and reduced efficiency or under-actuation in one of the mediums. This letter introduces “WuKong”, a HAAV with a simple structure, compact size, and high maneuverability. WuKong has a maximum width of only 300 mm in one dimension, with 2.48 thrust-to-weight ratio. Its operational range spans 20 m in the air and 3 m underwater, enabling seamless cross-domain maneuvers. These capabilities are attributed to the use of separate thrusters for aerial and aquatic, in conjunction with the proposed cross-domain hybrid control framework, and the incremental nonlinear dynamic inversion (INDI)-based underwater attitude control law. Through simulations and field experiments, WuKong's cross-domain transition capability and the underwater maneuverability performance are demonstrated. Our development provides a practical solution for HAAV applications and offers a platform for subsequent HAAV collaborative tasks.","PeriodicalId":13241,"journal":{"name":"IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters","volume":"10 2","pages":"1417-1424"},"PeriodicalIF":4.6,"publicationDate":"2024-12-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142918340","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-12-25DOI: 10.1109/LRA.2024.3522765
Hugo Lefévre;Tomohiro Chaki;Tomohiro Kawakami;Arnaud Tanguy;Takahide Yoshiike;Abderrahmane Kheddar
Standing and sitting are basic tasks that become increasingly difficult with age or frailty. Assisting these movements using humanoid robots is a complex challenge, particularly in determining where and how much force the robot should apply to effectively support the human's dynamic motions. In this letter, we propose a method to compute assistive forces directly from the human's dynamic balance, using criteria typically employed in humanoid robots. Specifically, we map humanoid dynamic balance metrics onto human motion to calculate the forces required to stabilize the human's current posture. These forces are then applied at the appropriate locations on the human body by the humanoid. Our approach combines the variable height 3D divergent component of motion with gravito-inertial wrench cones to define a 3D balance region. Using centroidal feedback, we compute the required assistance force to maintain balance and distribute the resulting wrenches across the human's body using a humanoid robot dynamically balanced according to the same criteria. We demonstrate the effectiveness of this framework through both simulations and experiments, where a humanoid assists a person in sit-to-stand and stand-to-sit motions, with the person wearing an age-simulation suit to emulate frailty.
{"title":"Humanoid-Human Sit-to-Stand-to-Sit Assistance","authors":"Hugo Lefévre;Tomohiro Chaki;Tomohiro Kawakami;Arnaud Tanguy;Takahide Yoshiike;Abderrahmane Kheddar","doi":"10.1109/LRA.2024.3522765","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/LRA.2024.3522765","url":null,"abstract":"Standing and sitting are basic tasks that become increasingly difficult with age or frailty. Assisting these movements using humanoid robots is a complex challenge, particularly in determining where and how much force the robot should apply to effectively support the human's dynamic motions. In this letter, we propose a method to compute assistive forces directly from the human's dynamic balance, using criteria typically employed in humanoid robots. Specifically, we map humanoid dynamic balance metrics onto human motion to calculate the forces required to stabilize the human's current posture. These forces are then applied at the appropriate locations on the human body by the humanoid. Our approach combines the variable height 3D divergent component of motion with gravito-inertial wrench cones to define a 3D balance region. Using centroidal feedback, we compute the required assistance force to maintain balance and distribute the resulting wrenches across the human's body using a humanoid robot dynamically balanced according to the same criteria. We demonstrate the effectiveness of this framework through both simulations and experiments, where a humanoid assists a person in sit-to-stand and stand-to-sit motions, with the person wearing an age-simulation suit to emulate frailty.","PeriodicalId":13241,"journal":{"name":"IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters","volume":"10 2","pages":"1521-1528"},"PeriodicalIF":4.6,"publicationDate":"2024-12-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142938310","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-12-25DOI: 10.1109/LRA.2024.3522786
Satyanarayana G. Manyam;David W. Casbeer;Colin Taylor
We consider a motion planning problem for vehicles with curvature constraints, such as minimum turn radius, and a secondary cost such as resource cost. Traditional motion planning problems address the secondary cost as a soft constraint within the cost function. In the current paper, we take a different approach and treat this as a constraint, separate from the primary objective cost. Specifically, the integrated resource cost along the vehicle's path is constrained to be within a pre-specified limit, which is separate from the main travel cost being optimized. This approach is suitable for applications such as fire fighting, where finding the paths of minimum cost or time is essential while limiting exposure to the high heat areas. To address the resource constraints, we introduce the Hybrid Theta $^*$