- Title: SWITZERLAND: Insect-style flying robot perches to save energy
- Date: 5th August 2013
- Summary: NEW YORK, NEW YORK, UNITED STATES (FILE) (REUTERS) VARIOUS OF GECKOS PROBOLINGGO, EAST JAVA PROVINCE, INDONESIA (FILE) (REUTERS) VARIOUS OF GECKOS IN STORAGE CAGE VARIOUS OF GECKOS
- Embargoed: 20th August 2013 13:00
- Keywords:
- Location: Switzerland, Indonesia, Usa
- City:
- Country: Usa Switzerland Indonesia
- Topics: Environment,General,Science
- Reuters ID: LVA1CVO77CKQEO0Y9VBP9YK5NTRL
- Story Text: Scientists have long thought that flying robots could play a leading role in accessing difficult environments, such as collapsed or contaminated buildings. But flying robots have one major problem - unable to navigate autonomously they collide with obstacles and break or become stuck, often rendering themselves useless.
Scientists at Swiss technology research institute EPFL (École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne) think they have the answer - their flying AirBurr V11 robot, designed to withstand collisions and continue its flight with minimal fuss.
Adrien Briod, an EPFL doctoral assistant and AirBurr V11 co-designer, said the robot was based on the flying skills of insects, which can withstand crashing into static objects at high speed before continuing on their path, only momentarily disoriented.
According to Briod, "Like a robot, insects were colliding into things. However, unlike a robot, insects were able to quickly recover in the air and continue their mission, continue flying. It was actually part of their everyday life colliding into things and we realised that that's a really important point that robots were not able to do. That's what led to this robot that's able to collide into things without breaking and even it's able to recover after a fall to the ground, so that it can fly again."
AirBurr V11's propellers are contained inside its core, making it entirely safe during collisions. Its electronics include conventional orientation sensors and motion sensors that allow the robot to be stabilised in flight while control surfaces deflect the air flow to keep the robot upright. Its star shaped frame is surrounded by carbon fibre bumpers to prevent impact damage. Just like you might trail your hand along a wall to find your way in the dark, the robot can bounce off walls or follow them without crashing to the ground.
The researchers at the Laboratory of Intelligent Systems, led by Professor Dario Floreano, have created a number of prototypes over the past four years, but believe their current model has made significant improvements, by adding a unique perching mechanism, named 'Gecko' after the warm climate lizard. Rather than using claws or sticky substances to climb up walls, geckos use van der Waals forces between the tip of each hair and the surface to cling to. The artificial hairs used on AirBurr have a miniscule diameter of 40um (micrometres) and a height of 100um.
Designed by fellow EPFL doctoral assistant Ludovic Daler, the Gecko adhesive pads stick to the wall when activated by the pilot's remote control as it gets close to a surface. The new perching mechanism allows a flying robot to extend its mission time by turning off its motors while it scans the surroundings, still providing an aerial perspective that is useful for real-world missions such as search and rescue.
"The mechanism is compliant, so it allows us to have a simple control of the robot because we can just hit the wall and the robot will just autonomously attach to the wall, so this pad has a very specific shape, as you can see here, it has these round surfaces that increase the action force that we can get from the pad," said Daler. "So first the robot will contact the wall with the top of the adhesive pad and then will roll on the surface to increase this adhesion force. So here the surface is composed of microfibres which use van der Waals forces in order to get the addition on the surface."
The pad is optimised for maximum attachment force and is mounted on a mechanism that stays within the structure of the robot during flight. The perching manoeuvre is very simple; the robot starts on the ground, takes off in the middle of the room, and when a perching manoeuvre is initiated by the pilot, the adhesive pad is deployed and the robot flies directly towards a wall. Once the robot is attached to the wall, the motors are shut down to save energy.
"We can use the sensor to align the robot in the correct position towards the wall, in order to attach to the wall, so we can decide which is the good position and deploy this adhesive pad and then we can attach to the wall because this pad can be activated so that when the robot's flying the pad stays inside the robot and when we detect a wall that is on the good side of the robot, we can deploy this adhesive pad and attach to the wall," said Daler.
In addition to containing a mechanism to pick itself back up and fly away after a crash, Airburr V11's ability to render collision little more than a minor irritant, could make it valuable in research and rescue missions, according to Briod, who said accidents even have a positive benefit for his craft.
"Our goal is that with this robot we can fly in very difficult environments, cluttered environments with many obstacles, and sometimes we can avoid obstacles, thanks to our on-board sensors, but sometimes we cannot and that's fine. We even use the information we get from collisions to navigate and learn from collisions to decide where to go next," said Briod.
The work was done in collaboration with Mettin Sitti from Carnegie Mellon University, an expert in dry adhesive materials. - Copyright Holder: FILE REUTERS (CAN SELL)
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