More Versatile Aerial Robots — Safer and Longer Flights

ABSTRACT: Flying robots, such as multicopters, are increasingly becoming part of our everyday lives, with current and future applications including personal transportation, delivery services, entertainment, and aerial sensing. These systems are expected to be safe and to have a high degree of autonomy. This talk will discuss the dynamics and control of multicopters, with a first focus on making these vehicles more robust to external disturbances, and component failures. The second part of the talk will discuss some results on novel concepts for increasing flight time. I will specifically describe some novel designs for multicopters; an approach to rapid path planning, and how we can adapt to energy requirements.

BIO: Mark W. Mueller is an assistant professor of Mechanical Engineering at UC Berkeley, whose research focuses on the design and control of aerial robots. He joined the mechanical engineering department at UC Berkeley in September 2016, after spending some time at Verity Studios working on a drone entertainment system, installed in the biggest theater on New York’s broadway. He completed his PhD studies at the ETH Zurich in Switzerland in 2015, and received an MSc there in 2011. He received a bachelors degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Pretoria in South Africa.

***Event will take place via Zoom. Zoom link and password will be distributed to the Controls Group e-mail list-serv. To join this list-serv, please send an (empty) email message to [email protected] with the word “subscribe” in the subject line. Zoom information is also available upon request to Katherine Godwin ([email protected]).