Risk-Aware Decentralized Multi-MAV Planning in Unknown and Dynamic Environments

Recent progress in multiple micro aerial vehicle (MAV) systems has demonstrated autonomous navigation in static environments. Yet, there are limited works regarding the autonomous navigation of multiple MAVs in dynamic and unknown environments. The challenge arises from the complexity of the motion planning problem, which requires the MAVs to...

Adaptive Composite Online Optimization: Predictions in Static and Dynamic Environments

In the past few years, online convex optimization (OCO) has received notable attention in the control literature thanks to its flexible real-time nature and powerful performance guarantees. In this article, we propose new step-size rules and OCO algorithms that simultaneously exploit gradient predictions, function predictions and dynamics,...

Interaction-Aware Motion Planning in Crowded Dynamic Environments

Autonomous robots will profoundly impact our society, making our roads safer, reducing labor costs and carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, and improving our life quality. However, to make that happen, robots need to navigate among humans, which is extremely difficult. Firstly, humans do not explicitly communicate their intentions and use intuition...

From Human Walking to Bipedal Robot Locomotion: Reflex Inspired Compensation on Expected and Unexpected Downsteps

Humans and other biological bipedal walkers are extraordinarily agile and robust. This is especially apparent when certain features of the environment are unknown such as unexpected downsteps (for example, suddenly walking off the side-walk or not expecting the last stair when descending). Humans can negotiate these downsteps ---both expected...

Probabilistic Motion Planning for Multi-Robot Systems

Planning safe motions for multi-robot systems is crucial for deploying them in real-world applications such as target tracking, environmental monitoring, and multi-view cinematography. Traditional approaches mainly solve the multi-robot motion planning problem in a deterministic manner, where the robot states and system models are perfectly...

The Effect on Computational Thinking Using SRA-Programming: Anticipating Changes in a Dynamic Problem Environment

This article illustrates that the task design and problem selection are of characteristic influence to evoke sense-reason-act programming (SRA) among primary school pupils when programming robots. Research shows that the task design influences the development of computational thinking (CT). The literature provides evidence that the context,...

3D Path Planning for UAVs in Dynamic Environments in the Presence of Uncertainties

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) are being integrated into all spheres of life, for a wide range of application in civil, commercial and military applications in both indoor and outdoor environments. UAV onboard intelligence is a paramount requirement in the realisation of UAV Traffic Management System (UTM) and Air Traffic Management (ATM)...

Where to go next: Learning a Subgoal Recommendation Policy for Navigation in Dynamic Environments

Robotic navigation in environments shared with other robots or humans remains challenging because the intentions of the surrounding agents are not directly observable and the environment conditions are continuously changing. Local trajectory optimization methods, such as model predictive control (MPC), can deal with those changes but require...

Stabilizing interventional instruments in the cardiovascular system: A classification of mechanisms

Positioning and stabilizing a catheter at the required location inside a vessel or the heart is a complicated task in interventional cardiology. In this review we provide a structured classification of catheter stabilization mechanisms to systematically assess their challenges during cardiac interventions. Commercially available, patented,...

Online trajectory planning and control of a MAV payload system in dynamic environments

Micro Aerial Vehicles (MAVs) can be used for aerial transportation in remote and urban spaces where portability can be exploited to reach previously inaccessible and inhospitable spaces. Current approaches for path planning of MAV swung payload system either compute conservative minimal-swing trajectories or pre-generate agile collision-free...

Online Trajectory Planning and Control of a MAV Payload System in Dynamic Environments: A Non-Linear Model Predictive Control Approach

Micro Aerial Vehicles (MAVs) are increasingly being used for aerial transportation in remote and urban spaces where portability can be exploited to reach previously inaccessible and inhospitable spaces. Current approaches to MAV swung payload system path planning have primarily focused on pre-generating (agile) collision-free, or conservative...

Distributed multi-robot formation control in dynamic environments

This paper presents a distributed method for formation control of a homogeneous team of aerial or ground mobile robots navigating in environments with static and dynamic obstacles. Each robot in the team has a finite communication and visibility radius and shares information with its neighbors to coordinate. Our approach leverages both...

Splitting and Merging of Quadrotor Teams Flying in Formation

Quadrotor UAV's have become extremely popular over the last decade, as they combine great agility with mechanic simplicity. For tasks such as area surveillance or maintaining a communication network, the deployment of multi-agent systems is required. In these scenarios, it often is necessary for the robot teams to navigate in formation while...

Reactive mission and motion planning with deadlock resolution avoiding dynamic obstacles

In the near future mobile robots, such as personal robots or mobile manipulators, will share the workspace with other robots and humans. We present a method for mission and motion planning that applies to small teams of robots performing a task in an environment with moving obstacles, such as humans. Given a mission specification written in...

Adapting company competences: A qualitative meta-analysis

The topic of company competences is approached by many theories in literature, each from its own perspective. In this thesis the focus is mainly on the competence-based view. The competence-based perspective claims that core competences are the source of sustainable competitive advantage, and are the unique capabilities which span over multiple...