Micro air vehicles have emerged as a popular option for diverse robotic and teleoperated applications because of their inherent stealth, portability, and disposability. In this work, we adopt a system-level perspective for the development of a rotary-wing micro air vehicle and propose a new design that utilizes gyroscopic dynamics for attitude control. Unlike traditional vehicles where attitude control moments are generated by aerodynamic control surfaces, the proposed vehicle will leverage the existing angular momentum of its rotating components to generate gyroscopic moments for controlling attitude. The capacity to rapidly generate large gyroscopic control moments, coupled with the precision gained from eliminating the need for complex and restrictive aerodynamic models, improves both agility and adaptability. We present the design and analysis of a new flying machine including the dynamic model with simplified aerodynamics and a control scheme based on a model linearized around hover. Simulations show the responsiveness and stabilization of a simple linear controller for hover.

An energy efficient joint-locking mechanism that works in conjunction with the main actuator of a robot module is presented. The mechanism will enable chain-style modular reconfigurable robots to perform a wide array of tasks such as dynamic motion and bio-inspired locomotion while consuming less power. The design process for developing this mechanism is presented, and analysis is provided. This mechanism is ideal for modular reconfigurable robot systems, but can be modified to suit many applications. A prototype is developed that outperforms comparable devices such as those that utilize piezoelectrics, magnetic particles, and electromagnetically-actuated disc and drum brakes in terms of power consumption and specific torque.

The geospatial category of simulations is used to show how origin centric techniques can solve a number of accuracy related problems common to 3D computer graphics applications. Previous work identified how poor understanding of floating point related issues lead to performance, architectural and accuracy problems. This paper extends that work by including time error minimisation, lazy evaluation and progressively refined fidelity and looks at performance trade-offs. The application of these techniques to a geospatial simulation pipeline is described in order to provide more concrete guidance on how to use them

Large virtual worlds (VWs) are increasingly common in the computer graphics areas of simulation, games, geospatial or scientific visualisation. In such VWs, simulated motion of the viewpoint and other objects becomes jittery and lacking in realism when far from the world's origin. Shape and appearance of objects can also degenerate. Since these effects depend on position in space, they will be collectively termed spatial jitter (SJ). Traditional solutions to SJ embody the idea that viewpoint motion through the VW must involve a change of the viewpoint's coordinates. This notion of viewpoint motion increases design complexity and the processing overhead of code written to counter SJ. A floating origin (FO) approach is presented which floats the world's origin with the viewpoint when navigating a continuous VW, eliminating SJ effects and lowering design and processing overheads. It ensures constant high fidelity in contrast to the continuously varying fidelity of conventional solutions.