Robotic research and developments in computing technologies including artificial intelligence have led to significant improvements in autonomous capabilities of robots. Yet, human supervision is advisable and, in many cases, necessary when robots interact with real-world, outside-lab environments. This is due to the fact that complete autonomy in robots has not yet been achieved. When robots encounter challenges beyond their capabilities, a viable solution is to include human operators in the loop, who can support robots through teleoperation, taking complete control or shared...

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.

This book deals with the study of tilt-rotor omnidirectional aerial robots and their application to aerial physical interaction tasks. Omnidirectional aerial robots possess decoupled translational and rotational dynamics, which are important for stable and sustained aerial interaction. The additional ability to dynamically re-orient thrust vectors opens the door to a wide array of possible morphologies and system capabilities. Through modeling, control, prototype design, and experimental evaluation, this book presents a comprehensive methodology and examples for the development of a novel...

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...