Onboard plane-wise 3D mapping using super-pixels and stereo vision for autonomous flight of a hexacopter

Intelligent Service Robotics - Micro Aerial Vehicles (MAVs) have become very popular with a wide range of applications in cinema, surveillance, search and rescue, among many others. For these...     

CMOS linear programmable transconductor suitable for adjustable Gm-C filters

A novel CMOS linear programmable transconductor is presented. It is based on a telescopic cascode operational transconductance amplifier with source degeneration implemented by means of highly linear tunable active resistors. The transconductor has been designed in a 0.5 mum CMOS technology featuring a third-order intermodulation (IM3) of -54.8 dB at 10 MHz for a 1 V_pp output voltage. Its feasibility for Gm-C filter design has been experimentally validated with a 1 MHz tunable third-order Chebyshev lowpass filter suitable for Bluetooth applications.     

Robust Fractional-Order PI Controller Implemented on a Laboratory Hydraulic Canal

This paper deals with the development of a new robust fractional-order PI controller for hydraulic canals whose parameters can vary in a wide range. Robustness to gain changes has particularly been increased. A method to design these controllers through the use of frequency specifications is proposed. Analysis of the frequency response of the closed-loop canal shows that the general robustness was also enhanced. Two of these fractional controllers have been experimentally implemented in a laboratory hydraulic canal characterized by time-varying dynamical parameters. A comparison between the real-time responses of the fractional-order control system and those of the standard PI demonstrates the effectiveness of the proposed fractional-order control strategy in terms of performance and robustness.