PhD Dissertation
J. Thomas, “Grasping, Perching, and Visual Servoing for Micro Aerial Vehicles,” University of Pennsylvania, 2017.
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Journals
X. Kan, J. Thomas, H. Teng, H. G. Tanner, V. Kumar, and K. Karydis, “Analysis of Ground Effect for Small-Scale UAVs in Forward Flight,” IEEE Robot. Autom. Lett., vol. 4, no. 4, pp. 3860–3867, Oct. 2019.
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T. Baca et al., “Autonomous landing on a moving vehicle with an unmanned aerial vehicle,” J. F. Robot., vol. 36, no. 5, pp. 874–891, Aug. 2019.
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V. Spurný et al., “Cooperative autonomous search, grasping, and delivering in a treasure hunt scenario by a team of unmanned aerial vehicles,” J. F. Robot., vol. 1, no. 24, 2018.
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G. Loianno et al., “Localization, Grasping, and Transportation of Magnetic Objects by a Team of MAVs in Challenging Desert-Like Environments,” IEEE Robot. Autom. Lett., vol. 3, no. 3, pp. 1576–1583, Jul. 2018.
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S. Tang, J. Thomas, and V. Kumar, “Hold Or take Optimal Plan (HOOP): A quadratic programming approach to multi-robot trajectory generation,” Int. J. Rob. Res., p. 027836491774153, Dec. 2017.
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J. Thomas, J. Welde, G. Loianno, K. Daniilidis, and V. Kumar, “Autonomous Flight for Detection, Localization, and Tracking of Moving Targets With a Small Quadrotor,” IEEE Robot. Autom. Lett., vol. 2, no. 3, pp. 1762–1769, Jul. 2017.
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R. Tron, J. Thomas, G. Loianno, K. Daniilidis, and V. Kumar, “A distributed optimization framework for localization and formation control,” IEEE Control Syst. Mag., vol. 36, no. 4, pp. 22–44, 2016.
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M. Saska, T. Baca, J. Thomas, J. Chudoba, L. Preucil, T. Krajnik, J. Faigl, G. Loianno, and V. Kumar, “System for deployment of groups of unmanned micro aerial vehicles in GPS-denied environments using onboard visual relative localization,” Auton. Robots, Apr. 2016.
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M. Saska, V. Vonásek, J. Chudoba, J. Thomas, G. Loianno, and V. Kumar, “Swarm Distribution and Deployment for Cooperative Surveillance by Micro-Aerial Vehicles,” J. Intell. Robot. Syst., 2016.
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J. Thomas, G. Loianno, K. Daniilidis, and V. Kumar, “Visual Servoing of Quadrotors for Perching by Hanging from Cylindrical Objects,” IEEE Robot. Autom. Lett., pp. 1–8, 2016.
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J. Thomas, M. Pope, G. Loianno, E. W. Hawkes, M. A. Estrada, H. Jiang, M. R. Cutkosky, and V. Kumar, “Aggressive Flight for Perching on Inclined Surfaces,” J. Mech. Robot., Dec. 2015.
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J. Thomas, G. Loianno, J. Polin, K. Sreenath, and V. Kumar, “Toward autonomous avian-inspired grasping for micro aerial vehicles,” Bioinspir. Biomim., vol. 9, no. 2, p. 025010, Jun. 2014.
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Conferences
J. Thomas, G. Loianno, K. Daniilidis, and V. Kumar, “The role of vision in perching and grasping for MAVs,” in SPIE 9836, Micro- and Nanotechnology Sensors, Systems, and Applications VIII, 2016, vol. 9836, p. 98361S.
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R. Tron, J. Thomas, G. Loianno, K. Daniilidis, and V. Kumar, “Bearing-Only Formation Control with Auxiliary Distance Measurements, Leaders, and Collision Avoidance,” in Conference on Decision and Control, 2016.
S. Tang, J. Thomas, and V. Kumar, “Safe Navigation of Quadrotor Teams to Labeled Goals in Limited Workspaces,” in International Symposium on Experimental Robotics, 2016.
J. Thomas, G. Loianno, M. Pope, E. W. Hawkes, M. A. Estrada, H. Jiang, M. R. Cutkosky, and V. Kumar, “Planning and Control of Aggresive Maneuvers for Perching on Inclined and Vertical Surfaces,” in International Design Engineering Technical Conferences & Computers and Information in Engineering Conference (IDETC/CIE), 2015.
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G. Loianno, J. Thomas, and V. Kumar, “Cooperative Localization and Mapping with Micro Aerial Vehicles using RGB-D Sensors,” in International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 2015.
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R. Hayward, M. Eckert, J. Thomas, M. Whitzer, S. Chaudhuri, T. Fitzsimons, D. Hsu, M. Yim, and V. Kumar, “The Y-Prize Competition: An Inverted X-Prize Competition for Commercializing University Research,” in International Design Engineering Technical Conferences and Computers and Information in Engineering Conference, 2014.
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J.Thomas, G. Loianno, K. Sreenath, and V. Kumar, “Toward Image Based Visual Servoing for Aerial Grasping and Perching,” IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 2014.
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M. Saska, J. Chudoba, L. Precil, J. Thomas, G. Loianno, A. Tresnak, V. Vonasek, and V. Kumar, “Autonomous deployment of swarms of micro-aerial vehicles in cooperative surveillance,” in 2014 International Conference on Unmanned Aircraft Systems (ICUAS), 2014, pp. 584–595.
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M. Saska, J. Chudoba, L. Precil, J. Thomas, G. Loianno, and V. Kumar, “Plume Tracking by a Self-Stabilized Group of Micro Aerial Vehicles,” in Modelling and Simulation for Autonomous System Workshop, Rome, Italy, 2014.
J. Thomas, J. Polin, K. Sreenath, and V. Kumar, “Avian-Inspired Grasping for Quadrotor Micro UAVs,” IDETC/CIE, 2013.
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Workshops and Posters
V. Kumar, J. Thomas, and M. Whitzer, “A Tutorial on Kinematics, Dynamics, and Control of Quadrotors,” International Design Engineering Technical Conferences & Computers and Information in Engineering Conference (IDETC/CIE). ASME, 2014.
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R. Tron, J. Thomas, G. Loianno, J. Polin, K. Daniilidis, and V. Kumar, “Vision-Based Formation Control of Aerial Vehicles,” Workshop on Distributed Control and Estimation for Robotic Vehicle Networks. 2014.
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J. Thomas, J. Polin, G. Loianno, K. Sreenath, and V. Kumar, “Avian-Inspired Grasping for Quadrotor MAVs,” in Robotics: Science and Systems, Workshop on Aerial Mobile Manipulation, 2013.
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Qualification Paper
J. Thomas, “Trajectory Generation and Control for Quadrotor Grasping and Perching.” University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, 2012.
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