Flying Soft Robotic Gripper
RAPTOR: Rapid Aerial Pickup and Transport of Objects by Robots
Rapid aerial grasping promises vast applications that utilize the dynamic picking up and placing of objects by robots. Rigid grippers traditionally used in aerial manipulators require very high precision and specific object geometries for successful grasping. We propose RAPTOR, a quadcopter platform combined with a custom Fin Ray gripper to enable a more flexible grasping of objects with different geometries, leveraging the properties of soft materials to increase the contact surface between the gripper and the objects. To reduce the communication latency, we present a novel FastDDS-based middleware solution as an alternative to ROS (Robot Operating System). We show that RAPTOR achieves an average of 83% grasping efficacy in a real-world setting for four different object geometries while moving at an average velocity of 1 m/s during grasping, which is approximately five times faster than the state-of-the-art while supporting up to four times the payload. Our results further solidify the potential of quadcopters in warehouses and other automated pick-and-place applications over longer distances where speed and robustness become essential.
Flying Hydraulically Amplified Electrostatic Gripper System for Aerial Object Manipulation
Rapid and versatile object manipulation in air is an open challenge. An energy-efficient and adaptive soft gripper combined with an agile aerial vehicle could revolutionize aerial robotic manipulation in areas such as warehousing. This paper presents a bio-inspired gripper powered by hydraulically amplified electrostatic actuators mounted to a quadcopter that can interact safely and naturally with its environment. Our gripping concept is motivated by an eagle's foot. Our custom multi-actuator concept is inspired by a scorpion tail design (consisting of a base electrode with pouches stacked adjacently) and spider-inspired joints (classic pouch motors with a flexible hinge layer). A hybrid of these two designs realizes a higher force output under moderate deflections of up to 25° compared to single-hinge concepts. In addition, sandwiching the hinge layer improves the robustness of the gripper. For the first time, we show that soft manipulation in air is possible using electrostatic actuation. This study demonstrates the potential of untethered hydraulically amplified actuators in aerial robotic manipulation. Our proof of concept opens up the use of hydraulic electrostatic actuators in mobile aerial systems.
SMORS: A soft multirotor UAV for multimodal locomotion and robust interaction
SMORS is the first Soft fully actuated MultirOtoR System for multimodal locomotion. Unlike conventional hexarotors, SMORS is equipped with three rigid and three continuously soft arms, with each arm hosting a propeller. We create a bridge between the fields of soft and aerial robotics by mechanically coupling the actuation of a fully actuated flying platform with the actuation of a soft robotic manipulator. Each rotor is slightly tilted, allowing for full actuation of the platform. The soft components combined with the platform’s full actuation allow for a robust interaction, in the form of efficient multimodal locomotion. In this work, we present the dynamical model of the platform, derive a closed-loop control, and present simulation results fortifying the robustness of the platform under a jumping-flying maneuver. We demonstrate in simulations that our multimodal locomotion approach can be more energy-efficient than the flight with a hexarotor.