The bodies and brains of fish have evolved to achieve control objectives beyond the
capabilities of current underwater vehicles. One route toward designing underwater vehicles …

Nonholonomic systems provide an important class of mechanical control systems. One
reason for this importance is that nonintegrability is essential to both the mechanics and the …

In this paper we present a definition of" configuration controllability" for mechanical systems
whose Lagrangian is kinetic energy with respect to a Riemannian metric minus potential …

This paper presents a new motion planning algorithm which we call the Path-Directed
Subdivision Tree exploration Planner PDST-EXPLORE. It is a sampling-based method …

(cont.) This thesis also presents a new synchronization framework that can be directly
applied to cooperative control of autonomous aerospace vehicles and oscillation …

We consider planning and control problems for underactuated manipulators, a special
instance of mechanical systems having fewer input commands than degrees of freedom …

Problems in engineering, computational science, and the physical and biological sciences
are using increasingly sophisticated mathematical techniques. Thus, the bridge between the …

In this paper, we generalize our prior results in motion analysis to design gaits for a more
general family of underactuated mechanical systems. In particular, we analyze and generate …

Nonprehensile manipulation is the process of manipulating a part without a form-or force-
closure grasp. Without such a grasp, the part is free to roll, slide, or break contact with the …

In this paper, we study the trajectory‐planning problem for planar underactuated robot
manipulators with two revolute joints in the presence of gravity. This problem is studied as …