Speaker: Dr. Sophie Armanini
Department of Aerospace and Geodesy; Technical University of Munich, Germany

Thanks to their small size, low cost and relatively simple and fast manufacturing process, small-
scale UAVs facilitate the exploration of new and unconventional designs, which can allow for challenging tasks to be performed more efficiently or for new applications altogether. One class
of bio-inspired UAV that has emerged recently is the unmanned aerial-aquatic vehicle (UAAV).
UAAVs can operate in different mediums (in air, on/in water) and transition between these. This
capability could facilitate underwater inspection or sampling tasks, which currently rely on
manpower or on the integration of multiple vehicles. However, the conflicting requirements of
different modes of operation and the need to transition between modes represent challenges.
Obtaining mission-capable, robust and autonomous prototypes therefore requires extensive research efforts. This talk will provide a brief overview of recent design, modelling and system-
level analysis research on UAAVs. Using several robot prototypes as examples, different design principles and operational concepts will be discussed and evaluated. Approaches to model aerial- aquatic locomotion will be outlined and applied, together with experiments, to characterize recently-developed robots in various operation phases. An overview will then be given of control frameworks developed for different UAAVs and of outdoor testing results.

 BIO

Sophie Armanini is an assistant professor in the Faculty of Aerospace at the Technical University
of Munich, Germany, where she recently initiated a research group focusing on sustainable and
bioinspired flight. She obtained her MSc from the Technical University of Munich and her PhD
from Delft University of Technology, the Netherlands. Prior to her current position, she was a
research associate at Imperial College London, UK, from 2018 to 2020, and has been a visiting
researcher at Cornell University and Cranfield University (UK). Sophie’s research interests
include flight dynamics, system identification and control, especially for unconventional,
unmanned and bioinspired air vehicles – with the goal of enabling higher efficiency, improved performance and novel applications. Two major focuses of her research so far have been flapping- wing flight and aerial-aquatic robots.

Zoom Link for Meeting: Join URL: https://zoom.us/j/92908687098