Abstract
We present a multi-modal robot that flies, perches and climbs on outdoor surfaces such as concrete or stucco walls. Although the combination of flying and climbing mechanisms in a single platform extracts a weight penalty, it also provides synergies. In particular, a small amount of aerodynamic thrust can substantially improve the reliability of perching and climbing, allowing the platform to maneuver on otherwise risky surfaces. The approach is inspired by thrust-assisted perching and climbing observed in various animals including flightless birds.
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Notes
- 1.
A video of SCAMP in operation is available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bAhLW1eq8eM.
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Acknowledgements
Support for this work was provided by NSF IIS-1161679 and ARL MAST MCE 15-4. We gratefully acknowledge the help of H. Jiang, C. Kimes, W. Roderick and C. Kerst in conducting experiments.
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Pope, M.T., Cutkosky, M.R. (2016). Thrust-Assisted Perching and Climbing for a Bioinspired UAV. In: Lepora, N., Mura, A., Mangan, M., Verschure, P., Desmulliez, M., Prescott, T. (eds) Biomimetic and Biohybrid Systems. Living Machines 2016. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 9793. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-42417-0_26
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-42417-0_26
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