Bio-Inspired Deformable Propeller Concept for Smooth Human-UAV Interaction and Efficient Thrust Generation

Ruiz, Fernando Babi; Arrue, Begoña C.; Ollero, A.

doi:10.1109/lra.2023.3268045

Cited by 6 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 24 publications

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“…However, if the robot uses a soft material for its protection, but the realization of the actuation is only related to rigid structures, it cannot be defined as a soft robot, for example, an UAV with a soft shell (e.g., Panasonic Ballooncam), an attachment imitating remora discs, [5] soft landing pads, [6] or soft propellers. [7] These robots are rigid-flexible coupled UAVs using soft robot technology.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Recent Advances on Underwater Soft Robots

Qu,

Xu,

et al. 2023

Advanced Intelligent Systems

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The ocean environment has enormous uncertainty due to the influence of complex waves and undercurrents. The human beings are limited in their abilities to detect and utilize marine resources without powerful tools. Soft robots employ soft materials to simplify the complex mechanical structures in rigid robots and adapt their morphology to the environment, making them suitable for performing some challenging tasks in place of manual labor. Due to superior flexible and deformable bodies, underwater soft robots have played significant roles in numerous applications in recent decades. Meanwhile, various technical challenges still need to be tackled to ensure the reliability and practical performance of underwater soft robots in complicated ocean environment. Nowadays, some researchers have developed underwater soft robotic systems based on biomimetics and other disciplines, aiming at comprehensive exploration of ocean and appropriate utilization of unexploited resources. This review presents the recent advances of underwater soft robots in the aspects of intelligent soft materials, fabrication, actuation, locomotion patterns, power storage, sensing, control, and modeling; additionally, the existing challenges and perspectives are analyzed as well.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Recent Advances on Underwater Soft Robots

Qu,

Xu,

et al. 2023

Advanced Intelligent Systems

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“…Other authors explore the fabrication of exible propellers to improve safety using AM techniques by, either building an entire thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU) propeller [9], or just the rigid sections and then pouring the exible segments (Silicon rubber) using additively manufactured molds [10]. They report that at high exibility, e ciency drops rapidly to around 62% − 73% compared to rigid propellers, with thrust loses caused by deformations that modify the blade's aerodynamic pro le [9]. They also assume that low stiffness may induce larger vibration (thrust deviation), in contrast to a higher stiffness which provides better ying performance [11].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Aerodynamic behavior and acoustic signature of propellers fabricated by additive manufacturing

Chavez-Tolentino,

Li,

Siller

et al. 2023

Int J Adv Manuf Technol

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This paper explores the effects of surface texture on noise response and propeller-media interaction for additively manufactured (AM) features of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) rotary propellers. The microgeometry nature of material extrusion (ME), molding in additively manufactured molds, and vat polymerization (VP) processes was captured with areal texture measurements, and further aerodynamic and acoustic tests allowed to differentiate among these AM technologies. Three layer thickness values of 50 µm, 125 µm and 254 µm were tested on fabricated rotary blades at eight different rotational speeds ranging from 4000 RPM to 7500 RPM by increments of 500 RPM; measuring their thrust, torque, vibration and sound pressure level (SPL). The experimental results showed the overall sound pressure level (OASPL) is mostly constant around the recording microphones. Surface roughness and RPM were the main factors that affect performance. AM propellers exhibited a thrust loss with an associated OASPL decrease; with blades fabricated via VP having the least form deviation and best surface quality, outperforming other specimens compared against the commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) baseline. Expected advantages of using VP over COTS include onsite production and customization.

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A Study on the Effect of Structural Compliance Placing in Soft Contact/Collision Properties of Multirotor Micro Aerial Vehicles

Abazari,

Bakir,

Sertpoyraz

et al. 2024

Advanced Intelligent Systems

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Adding compliance (softness) has been introduced as an effective way to improve the physical collision resilience characteristics of multirotor micro aerial vehicles (MAVs). This article answers the question “Where is the best place to apply compliance in a multirotor MAV to make it more collision‐resilient?” by analyzing the output data of more than 1200 drone collision tests through two sets of accelerated and nonaccelerated collision experiments for four main configurations of micro‐quadcopters each possessing a unique softness layout of physical frame. It is shown that while applying compliance to the protective propeller guards (bumpers) of a micro‐quadcopter provides a more elastic collision, it does not improve its energy‐dissipation (impact damping) characteristics. On the other hand, enhancing the inner frame of the micro‐quadcopter with a softer structure results in higher rates of impact energy damping during the collisions and an increase in the impact time, which results in lower impact accelerations the MAV experiences during the crush. A mathematical model is developed representing the contact/collision interactions as nonlinear viscoelastic forces. Comparing the results of the simulations to the experiments suggests that this model can effectively mimic the impact behavior of contacting/colliding MAVs with different structural stiffness and damping.

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Bio-Inspired Deformable Propeller Concept for Smooth Human-UAV Interaction and Efficient Thrust Generation

Cited by 6 publications

References 24 publications

Recent Advances on Underwater Soft Robots

Recent Advances on Underwater Soft Robots

Aerodynamic behavior and acoustic signature of propellers fabricated by additive manufacturing

A Study on the Effect of Structural Compliance Placing in Soft Contact/Collision Properties of Multirotor Micro Aerial Vehicles

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