We present some of our recent results on high-performance aerial robots. First, we present two novel mechanical vehicle configurations: the first is aimed at creating an aerial robot capable of withstanding external disturbances, and the second exploits unactuated internal degrees of freedom for passive shape-shifting, resulting in a simple, agile vehicle capable of squeezing through very narrow spatial gaps. Next, we will discuss results on vibration-based fault detection, exploiting only an onboard IMU to detect and isolate motor faults through vibrations, even if the frequency of the motors is above the Nyquist sampling frequency. Finally, two results pertaining to energy efficiency are presented, one a mechanical modification, and the second an algorithmic adaptation for online adaptation of a vehicle’s cruise speed.
