Sumeet Gajanan Satpute

Avijit Banerjee, Jakub Haluska, Sumeet G. Satpute et al.

In this article, a floating robotic emulation platform for a virtual demonstration of satellite motion in space is presented. The robotic platform design is characterized by its friction-less, levitating, yet planar motion over a hyper-smooth surface. The robotic platform, integrated with sensor and actuator units, is fully designed and manufactured from the Robotics and Artificial Intelligence Team at Luleå University of Technology. A detailed design description along with the mathematical modeling describing the platform's dynamic motion is formulated. Finally, the proposed design is validated in extensive simulation studies, while the overall test bed experimental setup, as well as the vehicle hardware and software architectures, are discussed in detail. Furthermore, the entire design, including 3D printing CAD model and different testbed elements, is provided in an open-source repository and a test campaign is used to showcase its capabilities and illustrate its operations.

Andrea Berra, Viswa Narayanan Sankaranarayanan, Achilleas Santi Seisa et al.

The paper introduces a novel framework for safe and autonomous aerial physical interaction in industrial settings. It comprises two main components: a neural network-based target detection system enhanced with edge computing for reduced onboard computational load, and a control barrier function (CBF)-based controller for safe and precise maneuvering. The target detection system is trained on a dataset under challenging visual conditions and evaluated for accuracy across various unseen data with changing lighting conditions. Depth features are utilized for target pose estimation, with the entire detection framework offloaded into low-latency edge computing. The CBF-based controller enables the UAV to converge safely to the target for precise contact. Simulated evaluations of both the controller and target detection are presented, alongside an analysis of real-world detection performance.