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Foldable Drone Flies through Narrow Holes for Rescue Missions

Inspired by birds that fold their wings in the air when space is limited, researchers from the University of Zurich  and EPFL have developed a new foldable drone. The researchers designed the quadrocopter with four independently rotating propellers. The propellers are mounted on mobile arms that can be pivoted around the main frame with the help of servomotors. The control system regulates, in real time, each new position of the arms and adjusts the propeller speed depending on the center of gravity. The drone's default configuration is X-shaped, but it can adapt into H, O, and T shapes.

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Automation Defense Motion Control Robotics

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    Transcript

    00:00:04 [Music] birds have the ability to adapt to different flight conditions and tasks inspired by nature we present the foldable drone a morphing quadrotor that can change its shape and size the foldable drone can tailor its shape to different tasks for example it can enter a collapsed building through narrow gaps entering buildings from narrow gaps

    00:00:35 allows it to explore unaccessible environments and help rescuers during their mission it can assume different morphologies depending on the task as for example traversing horizontal gaps vertical gaps [Music] inspecting structures [Music] or transporting objects the foldable

    00:01:15 drone is composed of a mainframe and four independently rotating arms it is equipped with an on-board computer running all the algorithms necessary to fly on two cameras used for localization and exploration [Music] to guarantee stable flight at all times we exploit an optimal control strategy that adapts to the drones morphology on

    00:01:46 the fly [Music] this allows the foldable drone to dynamically change its shape while flying [Music] the controller does not require any symmetry in the morphology as it can handle also randomly generated morphologies the foldable drone is the

    00:02:20 result of the collaboration between the University of Zurich and EPFL Lausanne [Music]