Publications by William John Stewart

Collision‐Resilient Winged Drones Enabled by Tensegrity Structures

Dario Floreano, Raphael Zufferey, Simon Jeger, William John Stewart, Mohammad Askari, Omar Aloui

Flying robots are becoming increasingly widespread, not only as remote‐vision agents but also as tools capable of physically interacting with our world. As robots fly closer to obstacles, the likelihood of collision rises. While collision resilience soluti ...

Wiley2025

Method for wind harvesting and wind rejection in flying drones

Dario Floreano, Charalampos Vourtsis, Victor Casas Rochel, Nathan Samuel Müller, William John Stewart

The present invention concerns a method of manoeuvring a vertical take-off and landing, unmanned aerial drone (100) comprising at least an aerodynamic surface (101), wherein, during a flight of the drone, the aerodynamic surface generates lift and/or drag ...

2024

Wind Defiant Morphing Drones

Dario Floreano, Charalampos Vourtsis, Victor Casas Rochel, Nathan Samuel Müller, William John Stewart

Intense winds are a challenge for vertical take-off and landing drones with wings. In particular, in the hovering regime, wings are sensitive to wind currents that can be detrimental to their operational and energetic performances. Tail-sitters are particu ...

2023

Avian-Inspired Claws Enable Robot Perching or Walking

Dario Floreano, Won Dong Shin, William John Stewart, Mohammad Askari

Multimodal unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are rarely capable of more than two modalities, i.e., flying and walking or flying and perching. However, being able to fly, perch, and walk could further improve their usefulness by expanding their operating enve ...

2023

Unleashing Soft Modular Robots by means of a Bio-inspired Connection Strategy

Dario Floreano, William John Stewart, Davide Zappetti

Untethering can allow soft modular robots to move from the laboratory test bench into realistic environments and commercial use. However, today’s state of the art soft modular robots remain electrically connected to external power sources and controllers. ...

IEEE2022

How to Swoop and Grasp Like a Bird With a Passive Claw for a High-Speed Grasping

Dario Floreano, William John Stewart, Enrico Ajanic, Matthias Müller

There is a growing interest in unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) grasping, perching, and interacting with their surroundings by means of claws, arms, hooks, and other appendages. While multirotor vehicles can slowly lower onto a target object and grasp it, w ...

2022

A Lightweight Device for Energy Harvesting from Power Lines with a Fixed-Wing UAV

Dario Floreano, William John Stewart

Modern UAVs (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles) suffer from restrictions in flight range and time due to battery capacity limitations. One way to overcome these limitations is to harvest energy from overhead power lines. A growing body of scientific literature has ...

IEEE2022

How to compete with robots by assessing job automation risks and resilient alternatives

Dario Floreano, Nicola Nosengo, Fabrizio Schiano, Rafael Lalive, William John Stewart, Davide Zambrano, Antonio Paolillo

The effects of robotics and artificial intelligence (AI) on the job market are matters of great social concern. Economists and technology experts are debating at what rate, and to what extent, technology could be used to replace humans in occupations, and ...

2022

Elastic-Actuation Mechanism for Repetitive Hopping Based on Power Modulation and Cyclic Trajectory Generation

Dario Floreano, Auke Ijspeert, Won Dong Shin, William John Stewart, Matthew Alfonso Estrada

Animal locomotion results from a combination of power modulation and cyclic appendage trajectories, but combining these two properties in small-sized robots is difficult. Here, we introduce and characterize a new elastic actuation system based on an invert ...

2022

Robotic Elytra: Insect-Inspired Protective Wings for Resilient and Multi-Modal Drones

Dario Floreano, Charalampos Vourtsis, William John Stewart

Winged drones that fly in close proximity to obstacles or that are capable of aerial and terrestrial locomotion can benefit from protective systems that prevent damage to delicate aerial structures. Existing protective solutions focus on multi-copter drone ...

2021