Over the last decade, there has been an increased interest in developing aerial robotic
platforms that exhibit grasping and perching capabilities not only within the research …

Small aerial robots are limited to short mission times because aerodynamic and energy
conversion efficiency diminish with scale. One way to extend mission times is to perch, as …

Many critical tasks in robotics, such as locomotion or manipulation, involve collisions
between a rigid body and the environment or between multiple bodies. Methods based on …

We describe the design of an aerial robot inspired by birds and the underlying theoretical
developments leading to novel control and closed-loop guidance algorithms for a perching …

Utilities across the world are seeing increased penetration of inverter-based renewable
generation (RG) in their systems. These RGs have ride through curves programmed in them …

Dynamic surface grasping is applicable to landing of micro air vehicles (MAVs) and to
grappling objects in space. In both applications, the grasper must absorb the kinetic energy …

Perching allows Micro Aerial Vehicles (MAVs) avoid the power costs and electrical and
acoustic noise of sustained flight, for long-term surveillance and reconnaissance …

Modern UAVs (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles) suffer from restrictions in flight range and time
due to battery capacity limitations. One way to overcome these limitations is to harvest …

We consider the problem of designing a feedback controller for a fixed-wing unmanned
aerial vehicle (UAV) to execute a dynamic post-stall maneuver and land accurately on a …

Motivated by the limited landing space on board a ship, this thesis investigates the landing
of the Skywalker X8 fixed wing unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) in a net. Further motivated by …