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Full-Text Articles in Engineering
Power-Over-Tether Unmanned Aerial System Leveraged For Trajectory Influenced Atmospheric Sensing, Daniel Rico
Power-Over-Tether Unmanned Aerial System Leveraged For Trajectory Influenced Atmospheric Sensing, Daniel Rico
Department of Computer Science and Engineering: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research
The use of unmanned aerial systems (UASs) in agriculture has risen in the past decade and is helping to modernize agriculture. UASs collect and elucidate data previously difficult to obtain and are used to help increase agricultural efficiency and production. Typical commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) UASs are limited by small payloads and short flight times. Such limits inhibit their ability to provide abundant data at multiple spatiotemporal scales. In this thesis, we describe the design and construction of the tethered aircraft unmanned system (TAUS), which is a novel power-over-tether UAS configured for long-term, high throughput atmospheric monitoring with an array of …
Aerial Flight Paths For Communication, Alisha Bevins
Aerial Flight Paths For Communication, Alisha Bevins
Department of Computer Science and Engineering: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research
This body of work presents an iterative process of refinement to understand naive perception of communication using the motion of an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV). This includes what people believe the UAV is trying to communicate, and how they expect to respond through physical action or emotional response. Previous work in this area sought to communicate without clear definitions of the states attempting to be conveyed. In an attempt to present more concrete states and better understand specific motion perception, this work goes through multiple iterations of state elicitation and label assignment. The lessons learned in this work will be …
Power-Over-Tether Uas Leveraged For Nearly-Indefinite Meteorological Data Acquisition, Daniel Rico, Carrick Detweiler, Francisco Muñoz-Arriola
Power-Over-Tether Uas Leveraged For Nearly-Indefinite Meteorological Data Acquisition, Daniel Rico, Carrick Detweiler, Francisco Muñoz-Arriola
Department of Computer Science and Engineering: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research
Use of unmanned aerial systems (UASs) in agriculture has risen in the past decade. These systems are key to modernizing agriculture. UASs collect and elucidate data previously difficult to obtain and used to help increase agricultural efficiency and production. Typical commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) UASs are limited by small payloads and short flight times. Such limits inhibit their ability to provide abundant data at multiple spatiotemporal scales. In this paper, we describe the design and construction of the tethered aircraft unmanned system (TAUS), which is a novel power-over-tether UAS leveraging the physical presence of the tether to launch multiple sensors along …
Domain Adaptation In Unmanned Aerial Vehicles Landing Using Reinforcement Learning, Pedro Lucas Franca Albuquerque
Domain Adaptation In Unmanned Aerial Vehicles Landing Using Reinforcement Learning, Pedro Lucas Franca Albuquerque
Department of Computer Science and Engineering: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research
Landing an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) on a moving platform is a challenging task that often requires exact models of the UAV dynamics, platform characteristics, and environmental conditions. In this thesis, we present and investigate three different machine learning approaches with varying levels of domain knowledge: dynamics randomization, universal policy with system identification, and reinforcement learning with no parameter variation. We first train the policies in simulation, then perform experiments both in simulation, making variations of the system dynamics with wind and friction coefficient, then perform experiments in a real robot system with wind variation. We initially expected that providing …
Autonomous Uavs For Near Earth Environmental Sensing, David J. Anthony
Autonomous Uavs For Near Earth Environmental Sensing, David J. Anthony
Department of Computer Science and Engineering: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research
Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are playing an increasing role in large scale environmental monitoring. Small UAVs are increasingly used to monitor agricultural fields, infrastructure projects, and disaster areas. The combination of their sensors, ease of use, and portability make them an ideal tool for collecting information on demand about geographic regions. These small UAVs do have several significant limitations. The UAVs have very limited autonomy and fly pre-determined flight paths far above the underlying terrain, limiting the spatial resolution of the collected data. Current battery technology severely limits their flight times, which in turn limits the temporal resolution of the …
Flying By Fire: Making Controlled Burns Safer For Humans And Uavs, Rebecca Horzewski, Carrick Detweiler
Flying By Fire: Making Controlled Burns Safer For Humans And Uavs, Rebecca Horzewski, Carrick Detweiler
UCARE Research Products
A temperature sensing circuit board was developed that will allow Nimbus Lab's controlled burn starting UAV to react to the temperatures around it.
Invariant Inferring And Monitoring In Robotic Systems, Hengle Jiang
Invariant Inferring And Monitoring In Robotic Systems, Hengle Jiang
Department of Computer Science and Engineering: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research
System monitoring can help to detect abnormalities and avoid failures. Crafting monitors for today’s robotic systems, however, can be very difficult due to the systems’ inherent complexity and its rich operating environment.
In this work we address this challenge through an approach that automatically infers system invariants and synthesizes those invariants into monitors. This approach is inspired by existing software engineering approaches for automated invariant inference, and it is novel in that it derives invariants by observing the messages passed between system nodes and the invariants types are tailored to match the spatial, time, temporal, and architectural attributes of robotic …
Using A Uav To Effectively Prolong Wireless Sensor Network Lifetime With Wireless Power Transfer, Jinfu Leng
Using A Uav To Effectively Prolong Wireless Sensor Network Lifetime With Wireless Power Transfer, Jinfu Leng
Department of Computer Science and Engineering: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research
Wireless sensor networks are widely used for everything from border security to monitoring waterway pollution. Supplying energy for long term deployment is a main challenge in the applications of wireless sensor networks, as batteries are the primary energy source. Current wireless sensor networks deployed for long periods either require additional infrastructure, such as solar panels, or periodic maintenance. Our research lab has proposed a novel solution that uses a micro unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) to wirelessly charge the sensor nodes and prolong the sensor network lifetime. Recent studies have shown that significant power can be transferred wirelessly over medium distances. …
Analysis, Optimization, And Implementation Of A Uav-Based Wireless Power Transfer System, Andrew Mittleider
Analysis, Optimization, And Implementation Of A Uav-Based Wireless Power Transfer System, Andrew Mittleider
Department of Computer Science and Engineering: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research
Wireless power transfer is rapidly advancing in its ability to efficiently transfer power to a variety of devices.
As the efficiency increases, more applications for these systems arise. Since magnetic resonant wireless power transfer can only transfer a small amount of power, most current applications only focus on powering low-powered devices.
Wireless Sensor Networks are composed of many low-powered nodes which currently require human interaction to remain powered. We propose recharging a low-powered Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) with a magnetic resonant wireless power transfer system attached to a quadrotor Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV).
This thesis addresses three main challenges with …
Autonomous Aerial Water Sampling, John-Paul W. Ore
Autonomous Aerial Water Sampling, John-Paul W. Ore
Department of Computer Science and Engineering: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research
Obtaining spatially separated, high frequency water samples from rivers and lakes is critical to enhance our understanding and effective management of fresh water resources. In this thesis we present an aerial water sampler and verify the system in field experiments. The aerial water sampler has the potential to vastly increase the speed and range at which scientists obtain water samples while reducing cost and effort. The water sampling system includes: 1) a mechanism to capture three 20 ml samples per mission; 2) sensors and algorithms for safe navigation and altitude approximation over water; and 3) software components that integrate and …