Flow Control and Coordinated Robotics Labs
Small robots for hard places, estimation and control of complex systems, and the numerical methods behind both. Directed by Thomas Bewley at the Jacobs School of Engineering.
Pipe Network Inspection Robot
Compact, self-centering robots that inspect 2 to 6 inch gas pipe networks from the inside, now running in real steel pipe with on-board vision.
Current work in the lab.
- Pipe Network Inspection Robot Spring-loaded four-wheel robots for 2 to 6 inch pipe, with on-board joint recognition and odometry. Sponsored by ERDC-CERL and GTI Energy. Project
- Grid-Based Bayesian Estimation (GBEES) Non-Gaussian uncertainty propagation on adaptive sparse grids, accelerated on GPUs, for navigation in chaotic dynamics such as outer-planet orbits. By Benjamin L. Hanson. Project
- Canted-Rotor Hexacopter A six-rotor aircraft with tilted rotors and direct six-degree-of-freedom force control, so it can translate without pitching. Coming soon
- Single-Tethered Aerostat A balloon on a single tether whose winch damps the swing by modulating tether length, for long-duration sensing aloft. Coming soon
- Probabilistic Search Finding stochastically moving targets with multiple search vehicles on optimized time-periodic orbits. Coming soon
- Lander Junior A subscale propulsive lander: vertical take-off and landing on rocket thrust, built for control development and outreach. Coming soon
- Berets A family of small, high-power motor control boards for building and deploying feedback controllers on mobile robots. Current page
- myMiP A two-wheeled balancing robot kit, the lab's teaching and outreach platform. Current page
Earlier work, from mobile inverted pendulums and hopping robots to tensegrity vehicles and hurricane-observing balloons, is on the previous site.
The Renaissance series.
Four open textbooks by Thomas Bewley, published in draft, chapter by chapter, with code on GitHub.
Led by Thomas Bewley
Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at UC San Diego. The Flow Control Lab dates from 1998, the Coordinated Robotics Lab from 2004. Current and former members are listed on the previous site until the new page is ready.
Papers from both labs
Every paper is in the publication archive, with a complete bibliography as a single document. Each project page lists its own publications.