Design and Experiment of a Deformable Bird-inspired UAV Perching Mechanism

Abstract

Energy consumption and acoustic noise can be significantly reduced through perching in the sustained flights of small Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs). However, the existing flying perching robots lack good adaptability or loading capacity in unstructured environments. Aiming at solving these problems, a deformable UAV perching mechanism with strong adaptability and high loading capacity, which is inspired by the structure and movements of birds' feet, is presented in this paper. Three elastic toes, an inverted crank slider mechanism used to realize the opening and closing movements, and a gear mechanism used to deform between two configurations are included in this mechanism. With experiments on its performance towards different objects, Results show that it can perch on various objects reliably, and its payload is more than 15 times its weight. By integrating it with a quadcopter, it can perch on different types of targets in outdoor environments, such as tree branches, cables, eaves, and spherical lamps. In addition, the energy consumption of the UAV perching system when perching on objects can be reduced to 0.015 times that of hovering.

Electrically active smart adhesive for a perching-and-takeoff robot

“…Contrary to bird-inspired (7)(8)(9)(10)(11) and embedding-based aerial robots (48,49) that mainly depend on rigid mechanical construction to perch on static/quasi-static specified surfaces, the proposed robot can dynamically perch on and take off from various moving/ static surfaces (e.g., surfaces of buildings and vehicles) and absorb impact energy, inhibit rebound, and adapt various perching surfaces via structured soft materials. Meanwhile, the proposed robot can directly land on moving surfaces by relying on the high attachment ability of electrically active smart adhesive (fig.…”

“…Numerous existing aerial robots (especially with the weight on the magnitude of kilograms)-mimicking the "wrapping" (6), "grasping" (7)(8)(9)(10)(11)(12), and "hooking" (13) behaviors of flying creatures or attachment style (14)(15)(16)(17) of gecko and octopus-perched on arborization structures, surfaces of buildings, or other specific surfaces. However, the abovementioned approaches generally based on complicated rigid design theory (e.g., using mechanisms, motor/ pump, and grasping and locking devices), while promising on static/quasi-static perching surfaces, still seriously haunt UAVs' reversible perching on moving targets due to numerous inherent shortcomings.…”

“…However, the abovementioned approaches generally based on complicated rigid design theory (e.g., using mechanisms, motor/ pump, and grasping and locking devices), while promising on static/quasi-static perching surfaces, still seriously haunt UAVs' reversible perching on moving targets due to numerous inherent shortcomings. Ingenious rigid grasping/attachment structures or motors (7)(8)(9)(10)(11)14) are prone to trigger large weight, inertia, and landing impact, especially due to a substantial relative velocity difference between the UAV and the moving target; advanced control algorithms and additional sensors are conducive to alleviate inertia and impact and achieve stable perching yet again increase the weight of UAVs (10,12,(18)(19)(20). Moreover, unfriendly contact adaptability on perching surfaces and subsequent rebounds triggered by landing impact can sabotage the grasping/attachment ability, inducing perching failure (10).…”

Landing and take-off capabilities of bioinspired aerial vehicles: a review

“…The current paper will focus on methods already proposed for FWMAVs and methods that may be adopted for such vehicles in future work. bioinspired landing methods can be further categorized as: Reproduced from [112]. CC BY 4.0.…”

Metamorphic aerial robot capable of mid-air shape morphing for rapid perching

“…Currently, the aforementioned perching methods add additional modules and would increase a drone’s weight 31 , 32 . Therefore, a compromise between the mission endurance, which includes the time when the robot is perched, and the flight time must be struck.…”