Event Location: GHC 6115
Bio: Rick Cory is currently a Ph.D. candidate in the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab at MIT, working in the Robot Locomotion Group headed by Dr. Russ Tedrake. He received his B.S. in Computer Engineering and Computer Science from USC in 2004, and his M.S. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from MIT in 2008, for which he received the year’s Best Masters Thesis Award in Computer Science. Before attending MIT, he held an appointment in the department of Humanoid Robotics and Computational Neuroscience at ATR in Japan during 2004, and in 2005 joined the Robonaut project at the NASA Johnson Space Center.

Abstract: Nature’s flyers possess the impressive ability to gracefully ‘swim’ through the air while executing aerobatic maneuvers that routinely defy modern aeronautical and control engineering, consistently reminding us that the skies are truly their playground. These animals are masters at inducing and exploiting unsteady aerodynamics to execute maneuvers with unprecedented precision, with nowhere near the sustained propulsive power found in modern aircraft. This amazing ability to manipulate the air is commonly attributed to the intricate morphology of the wings, tail, feathers and overall sensory motor system of the animal.

In this talk I will demonstrate that using only an approximate model of the post-stall aerodynamics along with principled tools in optimal control, even a simple fixed-wing foam glider (no propeller) made out of rigid flat plates with a single actuator at the tail is capable of executing a highly dynamic bird-like perching maneuver to land on a powerline – despite its stalled wings and tail. I will also describe the extension of these results to a flapping-wing version of our glider, as well as our fully autonomous two-meter wingspan robotic bird.