FURI | Fall 2022

A Soft Drone for Whole Body Perching

With limitations of the pneumatic bending actuator on slow activation time and limited rigidity for housing motors, we proposed a design modification on the drone arms to include bistable materials along with the fabric-based actuators from our previous design. The bistable material was assembled with the fabric-based actuators using additive manufacturing methods, which also helps create a rigid skeleton-like structure for the motor housing. This proposed design notably decreased the pressure requirement for the actuation from 20 psi to 10 psi for the activation task (perching/grasping). The result is a compliant whole-body perching drone with significantly improved compliance, and robust to uncertainties about the target location such as the size and shape of the object.