Collision-Resilient Insect-scale Soft Aerial Robots for Collective Flights in Cluttered Environments

Massachusetts Institute Of Technology, Cambridge MA

Investigators

Abstract

This grant will support research on millimeter-scale to centimeter-scale soft aerial robots capable of collective flight in cluttered environments. Unlike flying insects that can navigate in natural environments and perform complex tasks such as pollination, most existing flapping-wing micro aerial robots are fragile to collisions and are limited to flying in open spaces. This award supports the fundamental study of the collision dynamics of insect-scale robots, the design of fast collision-sensing methods and collision-recovery flight controllers, and the creation of new aerial microrobot capabilities, including swarm flight and the ability to perch on compliant or moving objects such as flowers. This research will provide economic and societal benefits by enabling potential new applications such as assisted pollination in vertical farming and inspection of highly cluttered and inaccessible spaces. In addition, the muscle-like soft actuators developed in this work may find applications in other types of mobile robots, in wearable haptic devices, and in microfluidic systems. This project has broader impacts in the education and training of graduate and undergraduate students. The bio-inspired robots will be used for STEM education outreach, including to underrepresented minority communities. This project will also support the development of educational multimedia materials and summer internships for high-school students. The goal of this project is to achieve collision resilience comparable to flying insects, and to further enable new capabilities for sub-gram flapping-wing micro-aerial-vehicles. These include swarm flight, exploration of cluttered natural environments, and pollination. This work combines analytical and experimental approaches and focuses on the following three directions: 1) formulate dynamic models and design experiments to measure collision impacts on sub-gram aerial robots; (2) substantially reduce collision detection time and design a feedforward reflexive recovery controller; and (3) demonstrate robust robot interactions with compliant and moving obstacles. The outcome of this study will result in novel flight demonstrations unseen in previous aerial robots. The new robot will be able to fly near walls, ceilings, and compliant objects such as flowers and leaves. Multiple robots will fly collectively in a cluttered space while demonstrating collision tolerance. The project will also validate the advantages of muscle-like resilient soft actuators for aerial robots. This project is supported by the cross-directorate Foundational Research in Robotics program, jointly managed and funded by the Directorates for Engineering (ENG) and Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE). This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.