Aerospace engineering
Related papers: 20
About
Aerospace engineering is a broad discipline concerned with the design, analysis, and operation of vehicles and systems that travel through air or space. In robotics and AI, aerospace principles are foundational to developing unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), spacecraft, and bio-inspired flying or swimming robots. Key applications include quadrotor attitude stabilization and control, insect-scale microrobotic flyers, autonomous path planning for agile vehicles, and space robotics for on-orbit servicing. Techniques such as inertial navigation, visual odometry, aerodynamic modeling of flapping wings, and satellite attitude estimation all draw directly from aerospace fundamentals. The field also informs the design of underwater vehicles inspired by fish locomotion, where fluid dynamics parallels those governing aircraft. Aerospace engineering matters in robotics because it provides the physical and mathematical foundations—flight dynamics, structural mechanics, control theory, and propulsion—that enable autonomous systems to operate reliably in complex, three-dimensional environments, from planetary surfaces to low Earth orbit, expanding the reach and capability of intelligent machines well beyond terrestrial constraints.
Top Researchers
Top Cited Papers
Small-scale soft-bodied robot with multimodal locomotion
Wenqi Hu, Guo Zhan Lum, Massimo Mastrangeli, Metin Sitti
Citations: 2305 • 2018
Review of fish swimming modes for aquatic locomotion
Michael Sfakiotakis, David M. Lane, J.B.C. Davies
Citations: 1901 • 1999
Soft robotics: Technologies and systems pushing the boundaries of robot abilities
Cecilia Laschi, Barbara Mazzolai, Matteo Cianchetti
Citations: 1489 • 2016
A mobile robotic chemist
Benjamin Burger, Phillip M. Maffettone, Vladimir V. Gusev, Catherine M. Aitchison, Yang Bai, Xiaoyan Wang, Xiaobo Li, Ben M. Alston, Buyi Li, Rob Clowes, Nicola Rankin, Brandon Harris, Reiner Sebastian Sprick, Andrew I. Cooper
Citations: 1409 • 2020
A review of space robotics technologies for on-orbit servicing
Ángel Flores-Abad, Ou Ma, Khanh Pham, Steve Ulrich
Citations: 1293 • 2014
Small Unmanned Aircraft
Randal W. Beard, Timothy W. McLain
Citations: 1262 • 2012
Optimal and Efficient Path Planning for Partially Known Environments
Anthony Stentz
Citations: 1245 • 1997
The aerodynamics of insect flight
Sanjay P. Sane
Citations: 1238 • 2003
A Least Squares Estimate of Satellite Attitude
Grace Wahba
Citations: 1110 • 1965
Controlled Flight of a Biologically Inspired, Insect-Scale Robot
Y. Kevin, Pakpong Chirarattananon, Sawyer B. Fuller, Robert J. Wood
Citations: 1102 • 2013
GelSight: High-Resolution Robot Tactile Sensors for Estimating Geometry and Force
Wenzhen Yuan, Siyuan Dong, Edward H. Adelson
Citations: 1102 • 2017
Data-Driven Science and Engineering
Steven L. Brunton, J. Nathan Kutz
Citations: 1100 • 2019
Soft Robotics: Review of Fluid‐Driven Intrinsically Soft Devices; Manufacturing, Sensing, Control, and Applications in Human‐Robot Interaction
Panagiotis Polygerinos, Nikolaus Correll, Stephen A. Morin, Bobak Mosadegh, Çağdaş D. Önal, Kirstin Petersen, Matteo Cianchetti, Michael T. Tolley, Robert F. Shepherd
Citations: 1021 • 2017
Attitude stabilization of a VTOL quadrotor aircraft
Abdelhamid Tayebi, S. McGilvray
Citations: 1004 • 2006
Path Planning for Autonomous Vehicles in Unknown Semi-structured Environments
Dmitri Dolgov, Sebastian Thrun, Michael Montemerlo, James Diebel
Citations: 940 • 2010
Autonomous Soft Robotic Fish Capable of Escape Maneuvers Using Fluidic Elastomer Actuators
Andrew D. Marchese, Çağdaş D. Önal, Daniela Rus
Citations: 915 • 2014
The First Takeoff of a Biologically Inspired At-Scale Robotic Insect
Robert J. Wood
Citations: 905 • 2008
Modeling of Soft Fiber-Reinforced Bending Actuators
Panagiotis Polygerinos, Zheng Wang, Johannes T. B. Overvelde, Kevin C. Galloway, Robert J. Wood, Katia Bertoldi, Conor J. Walsh
Citations: 883 • 2015
Real-Time Motion Planning for Agile Autonomous Vehicles
Emilio Frazzoli, Munther A. Dahleh, Éric Féron
Citations: 826 • 2002
Full control of a quadrotor
Samir Bouabdallah, Roland Siegwart
Citations: 796 • 2007