Data-Collecting Quadcopter Perches on Rough Outdoor Surfaces

Quadrotors have become affordable, ubiquitous platforms that can fly quickly over rugged terrain to collect critical data, but most small quadrotors can only stay in the air for tens of minutes at a time. Perching allows a quadrotor to shut down its motors and let its sensors acquire data over an extended period of time. Researchers from Stanford University's Biomimetics & Dexterous Manipulation Lab have developed an opposed-grip strategy with micro-spines - hardened steel spikes on a special suspension - that enables quadcopters to perch on outdoor rough surfaces. This opposed-grip strategy works by dragging two sets of microspines along a surface in opposite directions. The spines catch against tiny bumps and pits on the surface and hang on using friction. Pulling the opposed sets of spines against each other produces a tight grip that lets the quadrotor land not only on vertical walls, but also on angled or overhanging surfaces.

Transcript

00:00:03 at Stanford we're interested in extending the capabilities of small flying vehicles in this video we present a new robot which can Purge and land on outdoor vertical and inverted rough surfaces with microspines using an opposed to grip strategy for vertical surface perching Upon A Gentle impact the quadcopter pivots on its tail spines to align with

00:00:26 the surface the thror pushes the quad copter into the surface to trigger the trust collapsing landing gear the two groups of opposed micro spines are pulled inward to provide grasping Force to counterbalance with the pitchback moment the quad copter can then remain purged and take videos for hours before the battery dies when taking off the quadcopter

00:00:50 pivots backward on his tail and then turns on full thrust to fly away for various reasons such as getting a better view of an onboard camera or avoiding Wind and Rain it can be better to purch on seating after finding a good spot the quadopter Flies directly up into the surface the opposed microspines pull Inward and latch onto bumps and Pits on

00:01:20 the surface just like mosquitoes and spiders do the opposed to grip strategy provides adequate grasping Force for the quadopter to H when it is time to take off the release Servo opens and resets the landing gear this detaches the quad cter from the ceiling so it can fly [Music]

00:01:44 away such ping strategy can be applied to surface crack checking on bridges and dams environmental monitoring forests and earthquake and Fire Rescue