Publications

In our recent Nature article, we developed a new theory on how flying drones and insects can estimate gravity direction by combining visual motion sensing with a model of how they move. This discovery forms a parsimonious explanation of multiple phenomena observed in biology and is also an important step for the creation of autonomous tiny drones with even fewer sensors. 

Guido C. H. E. Croon, Julien J. G. Dupeyroux, Christophe De Wagter, Abhishek Chatterjee, Diana A. Olejnik, Franck Ruffier: Accommodating unobservability to control flight attitude with optic flow. In: Nature, vol. 610, no. 7932, pp. 485–490, 2022, ISSN: 0028-0836.
 

Nature Machine Intelligence Paper

Whereas insects seem to control their flight effortlessly with the help of optical flow, robots that attempt to do the same run into problems. We propose as a solution a learning process that allows robots to see distances by means of visual appearance (colors, textures, shapes). Would it be possible that insects do the same?

The article is featured on the cover of Nature Machine Intelligence. Cover reprinted by permission from Springer Nature.

G.C.H.E. de Croon, C. De Wagter, T. Seidl: Enhancing optical-flow-based control by learning visual appearance cues for flying robots. In: Nature Machine Intelligence, vol. 3, no. 1, 2021.

Science Robotics Paper

Our recent paper in Science Robotics presents the first swarm of tiny robots that can explore unknown environments completely by themselves. No map, no memory, and no GPS! The full paper can be found here.

K N McGuire, C De Wagter, K Tuyls, H J Kappen, G C H E de Croon: Minimal navigation solution for a swarm of tiny flying robots to explore an unknown environment. In: Science Robotics, vol. 4, no. 35, 2019.

 

Delfly Book

 

 

Our book about the DelFly has been published! The book introduces the topics most relevant to autonomously flying flapping-wing robots: flapping-wing design, aerodynamics, and artificial intelligence.

 

G C H E de Croon, Mustafa Percin, B D W Remes, Rick Ruijsink, C De Wagter: The DelFly - Design, Aerodynamics, and Artificial Intelligence of a Flapping Wing Robot. Springer Netherlands, 2016, ISBN: 978-94-017-9207-3.

 

Science paper

 

 

The Delfly Nimble was featured on the cover of Science Magazine in September 2018.

 

Matěj Karásek, Florian T Muijres, Christophe De Wagter, Bart D W Remes, Guido C H E de Croon: A tailless aerial robotic flapper reveals that flies use torque coupling in rapid banked turns. In: Science, vol. 361, no. 6407, pp. 1089–1094, 2018, ISSN: 0036-8075.

 

 

 

 

 

All publications

696 entries « 1 of 14 »

2024

Journal Articles

Tom van Dijk; Christophe De Wagter; Guido C.H.E. de Croon

Visual Route-following for Tiny Autonomous Robots (Journal Article)

In: Science Robotics, vol. 9, no. 92, pp. eadk0310, 2024, ISSN: 2470-9476.

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Dario Izzo; Emmanuel Blazquez; Robin Ferede; Sebastien Origer; Christophe De Wagter; Guido C. H. E. de Croon

Optimality principles in spacecraft neural guidance and control (Journal Article)

In: Science Robotics, vol. 9, iss. 91, no. 91, pp. eadi6421, 2024, ISSN: 2470-9476.

(Abstract | Links | BibTeX)

Liming Zheng; Salua Hamaza

ALBERO: Agile Landing on Branches for Environmental Robotics Operations (Journal Article)

In: IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters, vol. 9, no. 3, pp. 2845–2852, 2024, ISSN: 2377-3766, (Green Open Access added to TU Delft Institutional Repository ‘You share, we take care!’ – Taverne project https://www.openaccess.nl/en/you-share-we-take-care Otherwise as indicated in the copyright section: the publisher is the copyright holder of this work and the author uses the Dutch legislation to make this work public.).

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F. Paredes-Vallés; J. J. Hagenaars; J. Dupeyroux; S. Stroobants; Y. Xu; G. C. H. E. Croon

Fully neuromorphic vision and control for autonomous drone flight (Journal Article)

In: Science Robotics, vol. 9, no. 90, pp. eadi0591, 2024.

(Abstract | Links | BibTeX)

Robin Ferede; Guido Croon; Christophe De Wagter; Dario Izzo

End-to-end neural network based optimal quadcopter control (Journal Article)

In: Robotics and Autonomous Systems, vol. 172, 2024, ISSN: 0921-8890, (Funding Information: This work was supported by the European Space Agency.This research was co-funded under the Discovery programme of, and funded by, the European Space Agency. Funding Information: This work was supported by the European Space Agency . Publisher Copyright: © 2023 The Authors).

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Proceedings Articles

S. Wang; M. Hoed; S. Hamaza

A Low-cost Fabrication Approach to Embody Flexible and Lightweight Strain Sensing on Flapping Wings (Proceedings Article)

In: IEEE ICRA 2024 - Workshop on Bioinspired, Soft, and Other Novel Design Paradigms for Aerial Robotics, IEEE, United States, 2024, (2024 IEEE International Conference on<br/>Robotics and Automation, ICRA 2024 ; Conference date: 13-05-2024 Through 17-05-2024).

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Masters Theses

Noah Stam

Adaptive dynamic incremental nonlinear control allocation: An actuator fault-tolerant control solution for high-performance aircraft (Masters Thesis)

TU Delft Aerospace Engineering, 2024, (de Visser, C.C. (mentor); Smeur, E.J.J. (graduation committee); Mooij, E. (graduation committee); Delft University of Technology (degree granting institution)).

(Abstract | Links | BibTeX)

Francesco Branca

Optical Flow Determination using Neuromorphic Hardware with Integrate &amp; Fire Neurons (Masters Thesis)

TU Delft Aerospace Engineering, 2024, (de Croon, G.C.H.E. (mentor); Hagenaars, J.J. (mentor); Delft University of Technology (degree granting institution)).

(Abstract | Links | BibTeX)

Lyana Usa

Novel Neuromorphic Hardware Inspired by the Olfactory Pathway Model of the Drosophila: Leveraging bio-plausible computational primitives in digital circuits for spatio-temporal processing (Masters Thesis)

TU Delft Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science, 2024, (Frenkel, C. (mentor); Makinwa, K.A.A. (graduation committee); de Croon, G.C.H.E. (graduation committee); Nawrot, M. P. (graduation committee); Delft University of Technology (degree granting institution)).

(Abstract | Links | BibTeX)

Luke Waal

Towards a Robust Wireless Real-Time Ecological Monitoring System (Masters Thesis)

TU Delft Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science; TU Delft Aerospace Engineering, 2024, (Hamaza, S. (mentor); Rajan, R.T. (mentor); Smeur, E.J.J. (graduation committee); Hendriks, R.C. (graduation committee); Delft University of Technology (degree granting institution)).

(Abstract | Links | BibTeX)

Noah Wechtler

Implications of Propeller-Wing Interactions on the Control of Aerodynamic-Surface-Free Tilt-Rotor Quad-Planes (Masters Thesis)

TU Delft Aerospace Engineering, 2024, (Smeur, E.J.J. (mentor); Mancinelli, A. (graduation committee); Delft University of Technology (degree granting institution)).

(Abstract | Links | BibTeX)

Aleksandar Shokolarov

Self-Supervised Learning of Event-Based Optical Flow via Deep Equilibrium Models (Masters Thesis)

TU Delft Aerospace Engineering, 2024, (de Croon, G.C.H.E. (graduation committee); Wu, Y. (mentor); Delft University of Technology (degree granting institution)).

(Abstract | Links | BibTeX)

Sander Hazelaar

Adaptive Visual Servoing Control for Quadrotors: A Bio-inspired Strategy Using Active Vision (Masters Thesis)

TU Delft Aerospace Engineering, 2024, (de Croon, G.C.H.E. (mentor); Yedutenko, M. (graduation committee); Delft University of Technology (degree granting institution)).

(Abstract | Links | BibTeX)

Alexander Bom

Design of an inherently fully dynamically balanced aerial manipulator with omnidirectional workspace (Masters Thesis)

TU Delft Mechanical, Maritime and Materials Engineering, 2024, (van der Wijk, V. (mentor); Hamaza, S. (mentor); Herder, J.L. (graduation committee); Goosen, J.F.L. (graduation committee); Delft University of Technology (degree granting institution)).

(Abstract | Links | BibTeX)

Andreas Zwanenburg

A lightweight quadrotor autonomy system: To navigate in densely cluttered forest environments (Masters Thesis)

TU Delft Mechanical, Maritime and Materials Engineering, 2024, (Wisse, M. (mentor); Hamaza, S. (graduation committee); Benders, D. (graduation committee); Delft University of Technology (degree granting institution)).

(Abstract | Links | BibTeX)

Miscellaneous

Michiel Firlefyn; Jesse Hagenaars; Guido de Croon

Direct learning of home vector direction for insect-inspired robot navigation (Miscellaneous)

2024.

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Changrui Liu; Sven U. Pfeiffer; Guido C. H. E. Croon

Cooperative Relative Localization in MAV Swarms with Ultra-wideband Ranging (Miscellaneous)

2024.

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Matthew Yedutenko; Federico Paredes-Valles; Lyes Khacef; Guido C. H. E. De Croon

TDE-3: An improved prior for optical flow computation in spiking neural networks (Miscellaneous)

2024.

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Hang Yu; Christophe De Wagter; Guido C. H. E Croon

MAVRL: Learn to Fly in Cluttered Environments with Varying Speed (Miscellaneous)

2024.

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Marija Popovic; Joshua Ott; Julius Rückin; Mykel J. Kochendorfer

Robotic Learning for Adaptive Informative Path Planning (Miscellaneous)

2024.

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Sicong Pan; Liren Jin; Xuying Huang; Cyrill Stachniss; Marija Popović; Maren Bennewitz

Exploiting Priors from 3D Diffusion Models for RGB-Based One-Shot View Planning (Miscellaneous)

2024.

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Liren Jin; Haofei Kuang; Yue Pan; Cyrill Stachniss; Marija Popović

STAIR: Semantic-Targeted Active Implicit Reconstruction (Miscellaneous)

2024.

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Apoorva Vashisth; Julius Rückin; Federico Magistri; Cyrill Stachniss; Marija Popović

Deep Reinforcement Learning with Dynamic Graphs for Adaptive Informative Path Planning (Miscellaneous)

2024.

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Online

Till Blaha; Ewoud J. J. Smeur; Bart D. W. Remes

Flight Data of A Quadrotor Launched in the Air while Learning its own Flight Model and Controller (Online)

2024, visited: 05.09.2024.

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Unpublished

T. M. Blaha; E. J. J. Smeur; B. D. W. Remes

Control of Unknown Quadrotors from a Single Throw (Unpublished)

arXiv:2406.11723, 2024.

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T. M. Blaha; E. J. J. Smeur; B. D. W. Remes; C. C. de Visser

Flying a Quadrotor with Unknown Actuators and Sensor Configuration (Unpublished)

2024.

(Links | BibTeX)

2023

Journal Articles

G.C.H.E. de Croon

Drone-racing champions outpaced by AI (Journal Article)

In: Nature, vol. 620, pp. 952-954, 2023, ISBN: 0028-0836.

(Abstract | Links | BibTeX)

Guido C. H. E. Croon

Drone-racing champions outpaced by AI (Journal Article)

In: Nature, vol. 620, no. 7976, pp. 952–954, 2023, ISSN: 0028-0836, (Green Open Access added to TU Delft Institutional Repository ‘You share, we take care!’ – Taverne project https://www.openaccess.nl/en/you-share-we-take-care Otherwise as indicated in the copyright section: the publisher is the copyright holder of this work and the author uses the Dutch legislation to make this work public.).

(Links | BibTeX)

Cheng Liu; Yingfu Xu; Erik Jan Kampen; Guido Croon

Nano Quadcopter Obstacle Avoidance with a Lightweight Monocular Depth Network (Journal Article)

In: IFAC-PapersOnLine, vol. 56, no. 2, pp. 9312–9317, 2023, ISSN: 2405-8963, (22nd IFAC World Congress ; Conference date: 09-07-2023 Through 14-07-2023).

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Andrew J. King; Steven J. Portugal; Daniel Strömbom; Richard P. Mann; José A. Carrillo; Dante Kalise; Guido Croon; Heather Barnett; Paul Scerri; More Authors

Biologically inspired herding of animal groups by robots (Journal Article)

In: Methods in Ecology and Evolution, vol. 14, no. 2, pp. 478–486, 2023, ISSN: 2041-210X.

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Rasmus Steffensen; Agnes Steinert; E. J. J. Smeur

Nonlinear Dynamic Inversion with Actuator Dynamics: An Incremental Control Perspective (Journal Article)

In: Journal of Guidance, Control, and Dynamics: devoted to the technology of dynamics and control, vol. 46, no. 4, pp. 709–717, 2023, ISSN: 0731-5090.

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A. Altena; J. J. Beers; C. C. Visser

Loss-of-Control Prediction of a Quadcopter Using Recurrent Neural Networks (Journal Article)

In: Journal of Aerospace Information Systems (online), vol. 20, no. 10, pp. 648–659, 2023, ISSN: 2327-3097, (Green Open Access added to TU Delft Institutional Repository ‘You share, we take care!’ – Taverne project https://www.openaccess.nl/en/you-share-we-take-care Otherwise as indicated in the copyright section: the publisher is the copyright holder of this work and the author uses the Dutch legislation to make this work public.).

(Links | BibTeX)

Alessandro Mancinelli; Bart D. W. Remes; Guido C. H. E. De Croon; Ewoud J. J. Smeur

Real-Time Nonlinear Control Allocation Framework for Vehicles with Highly Nonlinear Effectors Subject to Saturation (Journal Article)

In: Journal of Intelligent and Robotic Systems: Theory and Applications, vol. 108, no. 4, 2023, ISSN: 0921-0296.

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T. M. Blaha; E. J. J. Smeur; B. D. W. Remes

A Survey of Optimal Control Allocation for Aerial Vehicle Control (Journal Article)

In: Actuators, vol. 12, no. 7, 2023, ISSN: 2076-0825.

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Christina Harvey; G. C. H. E. Croon; Graham K. Taylor; Richard J. Bomphrey

Lessons from natural flight for aviation: then, now and tomorrow (Journal Article)

In: The Journal of Experimental Biology, vol. 226, no. 1, 2023, ISSN: 0022-0949.

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M. K. Makaveev; M. Snellen; E. J. J. Smeur

Microphones as Airspeed Sensors for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (Journal Article)

In: Sensors, vol. 23, no. 5, 2023, ISSN: 1424-8220.

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G. C. H. E. Croon; W. Hönig; G. Theraulaz; G. Vásárhelyi

Cross-disciplinary approaches for designing intelligent swarms of drones (Journal Article)

In: Swarm Intelligence, vol. 17, no. 1-2, pp. 1–4, 2023, ISSN: 1935-3812, (Green Open Access added to TU Delft Institutional Repository ‘You share, we take care!’ – Taverne project https://www.openaccess.nl/en/you-share-we-take-care Otherwise as indicated in the copyright section: the publisher is the copyright holder of this work and the author uses the Dutch legislation to make this work public.).

(Links | BibTeX)

Jane Pauline Ramirez; Salua Hamaza

Multimodal Locomotion: Next Generation Aerial–Terrestrial Mobile Robotics (Journal Article)

In: Advanced Intelligent Systems, 2023, ISSN: 2640-4567, (Funding Information: This research is funded by the Delft University of Technology. Publisher Copyright: © 2023 The Authors. Advanced Intelligent Systems published by Wiley-VCH GmbH.).

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Barbara Dix; Meng Li; Esther Roosenbrand; Colby Francoeur; Steven S. Brown; Jessica B. Gilman; Thomas F. Hanisco; J. Pepijn Veefkind; Pieternel F. Levelt; More Authors

Sources of Formaldehyde in U.S. Oil and Gas Production Regions (Journal Article)

In: ACS Earth and Space Chemistry, vol. 7, no. 12, pp. 2444–2457, 2023, ISSN: 2472-3452, (Green Open Access added to TU Delft Institutional Repository ‘You share, we take care!’ – Taverne project https://www.openaccess.nl/en/you-share-we-take-care Otherwise as indicated in the copyright section: the publisher is the copyright holder of this work and the author uses the Dutch legislation to make this work public.).

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S. Schröter; E. J. J. Smeur; B. D. W. Remes

Design and Joint Control of a Conjoined Biplane and Quadrotor (Journal Article)

In: Unmanned Systems, 2023, ISSN: 2301-3850.

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E. J. J. Smeur; G. C. H. E. Croon; Q. Chu

Corrigendum to “Cascaded incremental nonlinear dynamic inversion control for MAV disturbance rejection”[Journal of Control Engineering Practice 73 (2018) 79–90, (S0967066118300030), (10.1016/j.conengprac.2018.01.003)] (Journal Article)

In: Control Engineering Practice, vol. 141, 2023, ISSN: 0967-0661.

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Books

Stephen Pringle; Zoe G. Davies; Mark A. Goddard; Martin Dallimer; Emma Hart; Léni E. Le Goff; Simon J. Langdale; Sara-Adela Abad; S. Hamaza; More Authors

Robotics and Autonomous Systems for Environmental Sustainability: Monitoring Terrestrial Biodiversity (Book)

EPSRC UK-RAS Network, 2023.

(Links | BibTeX)

Conferences

J. P. R Ramirez; A. Bredenbeck; S. Hamaza

Bioinspired Compliant Limbs For Robust Landing Of Free-Flying Robots (Conference)

17th Symposium on Advanced Space Technologies in Robotics and Automation, ESA/ESTEC, 2023, (17th Symposium on Advanced Space Technologies in Robotics and Automation , ASTRA 2023 ; Conference date: 18-10-2023 Through 20-10-2023).

(Links | BibTeX)

Proceedings Articles

Federico Paredes-Vallés; Kirk Y. W. Scheper; Christope De Wagter; Guido C. H. E. De Croon

Taming Contrast Maximization for Learning Sequential, Low-latency, Event-based Optical Flow (Proceedings Article)

In: Proceedings - 2023 IEEE/CVF International Conference on Computer Vision, ICCV 2023, pp. 9661–9671, IEEE, United States, 2023, (Green Open Access added to TU Delft Institutional Repository ‘You share, we take care!’ – Taverne project https://www.openaccess.nl/en/you-share-we-take-care Otherwise as indicated in the copyright section: the publisher is the copyright holder of this work and the author uses the Dutch legislation to make this work public. ; 2023 IEEE/CVF International Conference on Computer Vision, ICCV 2023 ; Conference date: 02-10-2023 Through 06-10-2023).

(Links | BibTeX)

W. J. E. Völker; Y. Li; E. Kampen

Twin-Delayed Deep Deterministic Policy Gradient for altitude control of a flying-wing aircraft with an uncertain aerodynamic model (Proceedings Article)

In: AIAA SciTech Forum 2023, 2023, (AIAA SCITECH 2023 Forum ; Conference date: 23-01-2023 Through 27-01-2023).

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Kartik Suryavanshi; S. Hamaza; V. Wijk; J. L. Herder

ADAPT: A 3 Degrees of Freedom Reconfigurable Force Balanced Parallel Manipulator for Aerial Applications (Proceedings Article)

In: Proceedings IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, ICRA 2023, pp. 11936–11942, IEEE, United States, 2023, ISBN: 979-8-3503-2365-8, (Green Open Access added to TU Delft Institutional Repository 'You share, we take care!' - Taverne project https://www.openaccess.nl/en/you-share-we-take-care Otherwise as indicated in the copyright section: the publisher is the copyright holder of this work and the author uses the Dutch legislation to make this work public.; ICRA 2023: International Conference on Robotics and Automation ; Conference date: 29-05-2023 Through 02-06-2023).

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Anique Altena; Salil Luesutthiviboon; Guido Croon; Mirjam Snellen; Mark Voskuijl

Comparison of acoustic localisation techniques for drone position estimation using real-world experimental data (Proceedings Article)

In: Carletti, Eleonora (Ed.): Proceedings of the 29th International Congress on Sound and Vibration, ICSV 2023, Society of Acoustics, 2023, (29th International Congress on Sound and Vibration, ICSV 2023 : The annual congress of the International Institute of Acoustics and Vibrations (IIAV), ICSV 2023 ; Conference date: 09-07-2023 Through 13-07-2023).

(Links | BibTeX)

Cheng Liu; Erik Jan Van Kampen; Guido C. H. E. De Croon

Adaptive Risk-Tendency: Nano Drone Navigation in Cluttered Environments with Distributional Reinforcement Learning (Proceedings Article)

In: Proceedings - ICRA 2023, pp. 7198–7204, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), United States, 2023, (Green Open Access added to TU Delft Institutional Repository ‘You share, we take care!’ – Taverne project https://www.openaccess.nl/en/you-share-we-take-care Otherwise as indicated in the copyright section: the publisher is the copyright holder of this work and the author uses the Dutch legislation to make this work public. ; 2023 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, ICRA 2023 ; Conference date: 29-05-2023 Through 02-06-2023).

(Links | BibTeX)

Rik J. Bouwmeester; Federico Paredes-Valles; Guido C. H. E. De Croon

NanoFlowNet: Real-time Dense Optical Flow on a Nano Quadcopter (Proceedings Article)

In: Proceedings - ICRA 2023, pp. 1996–2003, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), United States, 2023, (Green Open Access added to TU Delft Institutional Repository ‘You share, we take care!’ – Taverne project https://www.openaccess.nl/en/you-share-we-take-care Otherwise as indicated in the copyright section: the publisher is the copyright holder of this work and the author uses the Dutch legislation to make this work public. ; 2023 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, ICRA 2023 ; Conference date: 29-05-2023 Through 02-06-2023).

(Links | BibTeX)

Tom Suys; Sunyou Hwang; Guido C. H. E. De Croon; Bart D. W. Remes

Autonomous Control for Orographic Soaring of Fixed-Wing UAVs (Proceedings Article)

In: Proceedings - ICRA 2023, pp. 5338–5344, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), United States, 2023, (Green Open Access added to TU Delft Institutional Repository ‘You share, we take care!’ – Taverne project https://www.openaccess.nl/en/you-share-we-take-care Otherwise as indicated in the copyright section: the publisher is the copyright holder of this work and the author uses the Dutch legislation to make this work public. ; 2023 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, ICRA 2023 ; Conference date: 29-05-2023 Through 02-06-2023).

(Links | BibTeX)

696 entries « 1 of 14 »