Drone hangs sentimentally from branches
If drones collide with obstacles in the air, they risk crashing. Instead, they could hold on and turn off their motor. A sense of touch modeled after birds helps with this.
When flying a drone, you carefully maneuver it around every obstacle. Any contact could lead to a crash. Yet, in some cases, it would be desirable for the devices to be able to hold on at great heights and turn off their motors. This would save battery power or silence the annoying hum of the propellers for a moment. This would be interesting for people who use drones to monitor, for example, rainforests or complex industrial facilities.
However, commercially available drones are hardly capable of landing or holding on at airy and cluttered heights: if their cameras spot a potential landing site, branches or parts of the drone itself too often block the view. The landing fails.
Experts at Delft University of Technology have developed a system that allows drones to hold on securely even without a clear view, for example in treetops. They present their work in the journal «NPJ Robotics». To do this, they give the drone a sense of touch, as is known from birds: shortly before landing, the animals feel the branch with their feet and adjust their grip on it in real time.
To transfer this sense of touch to a flying robot, the researchers equip it with a three-fingered hand. Each finger, similar to a human's, has three segments. Each finger segment contains a sensor that provides information about whether it is currently touching something or not.
Using the camera, the drone first makes a rough estimate of where, for example, a branch is located. While it hovers in a figure-eight pattern near the landing site, the artificial hand opens and closes. Based on the nature of the initial contact, the drone can then infer the position and orientation of the branch. The drone then rotates and shifts until all three fingers report stable contact. The drone grips, and the motors shut off. If the grip is unsuccessful, it pulls back, hovers safely, and tries again.
With this work, the team wants to contribute to a rethink in aerial robotics. Contact during flight should no longer be considered a risk, but rather an opportunity to find a landing spot.
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