Insect-Like Flying Robot Operates in Chaotic Environments Without Sensors

Gimball is a spherical flying robot developed at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL) that buzzes around the most unpredictable, chaotic environments - all without the need for fragile detection sensors. This resilience to injury was inspired by insects. Gimball is protected by a spherical, elastic cage which enables it to absorb and rebound from shocks. It keeps its balance using a gyroscopic stabilization system consisting of a double carbon-fiber ring that keeps the robot oriented vertically, while the cage absorbs shocks as it rotates. It is powered by twin propellers and steered by fins. When tested in the forests above Lausanne, Switzerland, it careened from tree trunk to tree trunk while staying on course.

Transcript

00:00:08 the goal of this flying robot is to reproduce the amazing capabilities of insects especially the fact that they can Collide into things and continue flying afterwards to reproduce this we realized that we could put a lot of intelligence in the mechanics by having this rotating frame around the inner frame that always remains stable even when there are

00:00:29 collisions so this allows us to send the robot in very difficult environments for example for search and rescue missions where there are lots of obstacles and we can do that without complex obstacle avoidance techniques so that we have a very lightweight platform the novelty of this platform is its rotating protective frame it decouples uh the inner frame with all

00:00:52 the stabilization system and avionics so that when a collision occurs the inner frame remains stable and only the outer frame rotates to test our robot we flew it completely autonomously through a forest we just gave it a magnetic Direction and without any obstacle avoidance technique it was able to fly for several hundred meters while encountering multiple collisions with

00:01:14 trees [Music] [Music] designing and building a flying platform like this is very challenging the first challenge that I had to face with is the weight that's why I build this robot with the carbon fiber materials the second one is the uh balance so the robot could remain stable after the

00:01:47 Collision the main advantages of this platform is that it is very robust and lightweight and that's because it doesn't need heavy and complex sensors for obstacle avoidance in fact this robot can even use collisions and have the obstacle guided we think that this platform will allow Rescuers to access places that no other robot can access and we hope that

00:02:09 one day we'll be able to achieve the amazing capabilities of insects [Music]