Aerodynamic Co-Contraction in Redundant Aerial Actuation

Can two internal actuation states generate the same force or wrench while producing different local behavior?

Mini-lecture and slides

Same Force, Same Behavior? The Hidden Role of Drone Actuation

This recorded mini-lecture provides a common introduction to the two publications below. It starts from redundant actuation and task fibers, develops active aerodynamic promptness and its energetic trade-off, and then introduces passive aerodynamic damping and Variable Aerodynamic Damping Actuation.

• Watch the recorded lecture on YouTube Published 19 August 2026.
• Download the lecture slides (PDF)

The video and the PDF contain the same presentation. The papers provide the complete definitions, assumptions, results, and proofs.

Papers introduced in the lecture

1. Active promptness, fiber geometry, and the energy trade-off

Antonio Franchi, “Muscle Coactivation in the Sky: Geometry and Pareto Optimality of Energy vs. Aerodynamic Promptness and Multirotors as Variable Stiffness Actuators,” Proceedings of the 2026 IEEE International Conference on Unmanned Aircraft Systems (ICUAS), Corfu, Greece, June 2026, pp. 235-242. Best Conference Paper Award.

doi:10.1109/ICUAS69441.2026.11598607 | arXiv:2602.14222

The paper develops the task-fiber formulation of active promptness and studies its relation with power consumption in redundant multirotor actuation.

2. Variable aerodynamic damping and passive interaction shaping

Antonio Franchi, “Variable Aerodynamic Damping Actuation via Co-Contraction: A Structural Analogy with Variable Stiffness Actuation,” IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters, 2026.

doi:10.1109/LRA.2026.3723738 | arXiv:2605.07292

The paper identifies incremental aerodynamic damping as a fiber-dependent passive observable and introduces Variable Aerodynamic Damping Actuation.

Related talks

The following ICUAS 2026 recordings provide additional context. The plenary discusses redundancy in a broader aerial-interaction setting; the conference talk presents the first paper above.

• ICUAS 2026 Plenary | Aerial Robots for Interaction: Understanding Redundancy for Future Capabilities
  Published 19 July 2026.
• Muscle Coactivation in the Sky | ICUAS 2026 Best Paper Talk
  Published 20 June 2026.

Contact

Antonio Franchi
schol@r-franchi.eu
https://r-franchi.eu/