This book addresses the topic of autonomous flying robots physically interacting with the environment under the influence of wind. It aims to make aerial robots aware of the disturbance, interaction, and faults acting on them. This requires reasoning about the external wrench (force and torque) acting on the robot and distinguishing between wind, interactions, and collisions. The book takes a model-based approach and covers a systematic approach to parameter identification for flying robots. The book aims to provide a wind speed estimate independent of the external wrench, including...

This textbook provides a comprehensive, but tutorial, introduction to robotics, computer vision, and control. It is written in a light but informative conversational style, weaving text, figures, mathematics, and lines of code into a cohesive narrative. Over 1600 code examples show how complex problems can be decomposed and solved using just a few simple lines of code.This edition is based on MATLAB® and a number of MathWorks® toolboxes. These provide a set of supported software tools for addressing a broad range of applications in robotics and computer vision.  These toolboxes enable...

Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM) has been a long-standing research problem in robotics. It describes the problem of a robot mapping an unknown environment, while simultaneously localizing in it with the help of the incomplete map. This book describes a technique calledemph{Switchable Constraints}. Switchable Constraints help to increase the robustness of SLAM against data association errors and in particular against false positive loop closure detections. Such false positive loop closure detections can occur when the robot erroneously assumes it re-observed a landmark it has...

This book moves from a thorough investigation of human capabilities during movements and interactions with objects and environment and translates those principles into the design planning and control of innovative mechatronic systems, providing significant advancements in the fields of human–robot interaction, autonomous robots, prosthetics and assistive devices. The work presented in this monograph is characterized by a significant paradigmatic shift with respect to typical approaches, as it always place the human at the center of the technology developed, and the human represents the...

This book presents the astonishing potential of deep sensorimotor policies for agile vision-based quadrotor flight. Quadrotors are among the most agile and dynamic machines ever created. However, developing fully autonomous quadrotors that can approach or even outperform the agility of birds or human drone pilots with only onboard sensing and computing is challenging and still unsolved.Deep sensorimotor policies, generally trained in simulation, enable autonomous quadrotors to fly faster and more agile than what was possible before. While humans and birds still have the advantage over drones,...

This book collects the main results of the Advanced Grant project RoDyMan funded by the European Research Council. As a final demonstrator of the project, a pizza-maker robot was realized. This represents a perfect example of understanding the robot challenge, considering every inexperienced person's difficulty preparing a pizza. Through RoDyMan, the opportunity was to merge all the acquired competencies in advancing the state of the art in nonprehensile dynamic manipulation, which is the most complex manipulation task, considering deformable objects. This volume is intended to present Ph.D....

Using a designed vector field to guide robots to follow a given geometric desired path has found a range of practical applications, such as underwater pipeline inspection, warehouse navigation, and highway traffic monitoring. It is thus in great need to build a rigorous theory to guide practical implementations with formal guarantees. It is even so when multiple robots are required to follow predefined desired paths or maneuver on surfaces and coordinate their motions to efficiently accomplish repetitive and laborious tasks.The book introduces guiding vector fields on Euclidean spaces and...