Crash Landing onto "you": Untethered Soft Aerial Robots for Safe Environmental Interaction, Sensing, and Perching

TL;DR

This paper introduces untethered soft aerial robots capable of safe environmental interaction, dynamic perching, and versatile sensing, addressing challenges of robustness, adaptability, and energy efficiency in complex forest environments.

Contribution

It presents a novel soft aerial robot that can metamorphose for multi-modal flight and dynamic perching, enhancing environmental monitoring capabilities.

Findings

Successfully demonstrated dynamic perching on various objects

Achieved robust detection and landing in turbulent conditions

Extended operational endurance through innovative design

Abstract

There are various desired capabilities to create aerial forest-traversing robots capable of monitoring both biological and abiotic data. The features range from multi-functionality, robustness, and adaptability. These robots have to weather turbulent winds and various obstacles such as forest flora and wildlife thus amplifying the complexity of operating in such uncertain environments. The key for successful data collection is the flexibility to intermittently move from tree-to-tree, in order to perch at vantage locations for elongated time. This effort to perch not only reduces the disturbance caused by multi-rotor systems during data collection, but also allows the system to rest and recharge for longer outdoor missions. Current systems feature the addition of perching modules that increase the aerial robots' weight and reduce the drone's overall endurance. Thus in our work, the key questions currently studied are: "How do we develop a single robot capable of metamorphosing its body for multi-modal flight and dynamic perching?", "How do we detect and land on perchable objects robustly and dynamically?", and "What important spatial-temporal data is important for us to collect?"