André L. V. Coelho

Jongseok Lee, Ribin Balachandran, Konstantin Kondak et al.

This article presents a novel telepresence system for advancing aerial manipulation in dynamic and unstructured environments. The proposed system not only features a haptic device, but also a virtual reality (VR) interface that provides real-time 3D displays of the robot's workspace as well as a haptic guidance to its remotely located operator. To realize this, multiple sensors namely a LiDAR, cameras and IMUs are utilized. For processing of the acquired sensory data, pose estimation pipelines are devised for industrial objects of both known and unknown geometries. We further propose an active learning pipeline in order to increase the sample efficiency of a pipeline component that relies on Deep Neural Networks (DNNs) based object detection. All these algorithms jointly address various challenges encountered during the execution of perception tasks in industrial scenarios. In the experiments, exhaustive ablation studies are provided to validate the proposed pipelines. Methodologically, these results commonly suggest how an awareness of the algorithms' own failures and uncertainty (`introspection') can be used tackle the encountered problems. Moreover, outdoor experiments are conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of the overall system in enhancing aerial manipulation capabilities. In particular, with flight campaigns over days and nights, from spring to winter, and with different users and locations, we demonstrate over 70 robust executions of pick-and-place, force application and peg-in-hole tasks with the DLR cable-Suspended Aerial Manipulator (SAM). As a result, we show the viability of the proposed system in future industrial applications.

André Coelho, Pedro Ribeiro, Helder Fontes et al.

This position paper presents A4FN, an Agentic Artificial Intelligence (AI) architecture for intent-driven automation in Flying Networks (FNs) using Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) as access nodes. A4FN leverages Generative AI and Large Language Models (LLMs) to enable real-time, context-aware network control via a distributed agentic system. It comprises two components: the Perception Agent (PA), which semantically interprets multimodal input -- including imagery, audio, and telemetry data -- from UAV-mounted sensors to derive Service Level Specifications (SLSs); and the Decision-and-Action Agent (DAA), which reconfigures the network based on inferred intents. A4FN embodies key properties of Agentic AI, including autonomy, goal-driven reasoning, and continuous perception-action cycles. Designed for mission-critical, infrastructure-limited scenarios such as disaster response, it supports adaptive reconfiguration, dynamic resource management, and interoperability with emerging wireless technologies. The paper details the A4FN architecture, its core innovations, and open research challenges in multi-agent coordination and Agentic AI integration in next-generation FNs.

Yuri S. Sarkisov, Min Jun Kim, Andre Coelho et al.

This paper presents a design of oscillation damping control for the cable-Suspended Aerial Manipulator (SAM). The SAM is modeled as a double pendulum, and it can generate a body wrench as a control action. The main challenge is the fact that there is only one onboard IMU sensor which does not provide full information on the system state. To overcome this difficulty, we design a controller motivated by a simplified SAM model. The proposed controller is very simple yet robust to model uncertainties. Moreover, we propose a gain tuning rule by formulating the proposed controller in the form of output feedback linear quadratic regulation problem. Consequently, it is possible to quickly dampen oscillations with minimal energy consumption. The proposed approach is validated through simulations and experiments.

André L. V. Coelho, Fabrício O. de França

Perceptrons are neuronal devices capable of fully discriminating linearly separable classes. Although straightforward to implement and train, their applicability is usually hindered by non-trivial requirements imposed by real-world classification problems. Therefore, several approaches, such as kernel perceptrons, have been conceived to counteract such difficulties. In this paper, we investigate an enhanced perceptron model based on the notion of contrastive biclusters. From this perspective, a good discriminative bicluster comprises a subset of data instances belonging to one class that show high coherence across a subset of features and high differentiation from nearest instances of the other class under the same features (referred to as its contrastive bicluster). Upon each local subspace associated with a pair of contrastive biclusters a perceptron is trained and the model with highest area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC) value is selected as the final classifier. Experiments conducted on a range of data sets, including those related to a difficult biosignal classification problem, show that the proposed variant can be indeed very useful, prevailing in most of the cases upon standard and kernel perceptrons in terms of accuracy and AUC measures.