An origami-inspired cargo drone

Multicopters stand to revolutionize parcel delivery because of their capability to operate in areas with unsuitable road infrastructure and precisely maneuver in cluttered environments. However, current multicopters for delivery can be dangerous for people, and are difficult to store and transport. Safety issues arise because users are exposed to unshielded spinning propellers. Transportation to the place of deployment and storage is often impaired by the large size that is required for heavy lifting. This paper addresses these limitations by proposing the integration of a quadcopter into a foldable protective cage. The cage provides an all-round protective structure that physically separates the propellers from the environment, ensuring the safety of people. The drone and the cage can be easily folded with a single movement, significantly reducing its size for ease of storage and transportation. This design has been validated with a quadcopter that can lift parcels up to 500 g and reduce its storage volume by 92% when folded

Design of a Ballistically-Launched Foldable Multirotor

The operation of multirotors in crowded environments requires a highly reliable takeoff method, as failures during takeoff can damage more valuable assets nearby. The addition of a ballistic launch system imposes a deterministic path for the multirotor to prevent collisions with its environment, as well as increases the multirotor’s range of operation and allows deployment from an unsteady platform. In addition, outfitting planetary rovers or entry vehicles with such deployable multirotors has the potential to greatly extend the data collection capabilities of a mission. A proof-of-concept multirotor aircraft has been developed, capable of transitioning from a ballistic launch configuration to a fully controllable flight configuration in midair after launch. The transition is accomplished via passive unfolding of the multirotor arms, triggered by a nichrome burn wire release mechanism. The design is 3D printable, launches from a three-inch diameter barrel, and has sufficient thrust to carry a significant payload. The system has been fabricated and field tested from a moving vehicle up to 50mph to successfully demonstrate the feasibility of the concept and experimentally validate the design’s aerodynamic stability and deployment reliability

When Being Soft Makes You Tough: A Collision Resilient Quadcopter Inspired by Arthropod Exoskeletons

Flying robots are usually rather delicate, and require protective enclosures when facing the risk of collision. High complexity and reduced payload are recurrent problems with collision-tolerant flying robots. Inspired by arthropods' exoskeletons, we design a simple, easily manufactured, semi-rigid structure with flexible joints that can withstand high-velocity impacts. With an exoskeleton, the protective shell becomes part of the main robot structure, thereby minimizing its loss in payload capacity. Our design is simple to build and customize using cheap components and consumer-grade 3D printers. Our results show we can build a sub-250g, autonomous quadcopter with visual navigation that can survive multiple collisions at speeds up to 7m/s that is also suitable for automated battery swapping, and with enough computing power to run deep neural network models. This structure makes for an ideal platform for high-risk activities (such as flying in a cluttered environment or reinforcement learning training) without damage to the hardware or the environment

Novel Reconfigurable Delta Robot Dual-Functioning as Adaptive Landing Gear and Manipulator

In this work a novel dual-functioning rotorcraft undercarriage is developed. The design is a reconfigurable delta robot which allows for transformation between Adaptive Landing Gear for vertical take-off and landing and 3DOF Aerial Manipulation mode. To reconfigure between operation modes without reaching singularities, a guideline to find a singularity-free geometry is presented. An adaptive landing control was developed and validated on a test-stand. For the 3DOF manipulation of the delta-structure, a third-order smooth trajectory was presented and integrated. The prototype, also depicted in the accompanying video, is then presented in free flight experiments demonstrating the advantages of the dual-functioning system

Enabling technologies for precise aerial manufacturing with unmanned aerial vehicles

The construction industry is currently experiencing a revolution with automation techniques such as additive manufacturing and robot-enabled construction. Additive Manufacturing (AM) is a key technology that can o er productivity improvement in the construction industry by means of o -site prefabrication and on-site construction with automated systems. The key bene t is that building elements can be fabricated with less materials and higher design freedom compared to traditional manual methods. O -site prefabrication with AM has been investigated for some time already, but it has limitations in terms of logistical issues of components transportation and due to its lack of design exibility on-site. On-site construction with automated systems, such as static gantry systems and mobile ground robots performing AM tasks, can o er additional bene ts over o -site prefabrication, but it needs further research before it will become practical and economical. Ground-based automated construction systems also have the limitation that they cannot extend the construction envelope beyond their physical size. The solution of using aerial robots to liberate the process from the constrained construction envelope has been suggested, albeit with technological challenges including precision of operation, uncertainty in environmental interaction and energy e ciency. This thesis investigates methods of precise manufacturing with aerial robots. In particular, this work focuses on stabilisation mechanisms and origami-based structural elements that allow aerial robots to operate in challenging environments. An integrated aerial self-aligning delta manipulator has been utilised to increase the positioning accuracy of the aerial robots, and a Material Extrusion (ME) process has been developed for Aerial Additive Manufacturing (AAM). A 28-layer tower has been additively manufactured by aerial robots to demonstrate the feasibility of AAM. Rotorigami and a bioinspired landing mechanism demonstrate their abilities to overcome uncertainty in environmental interaction with impact protection capabilities and improved robustness for UAV. Design principles using tensile anchoring methods have been explored, enabling low-power operation and explores possibility of low-power aerial stabilisation. The results demonstrate that precise aerial manufacturing needs to consider not only just the robotic aspects, such as ight control algorithms and mechatronics, but also material behaviour and environmental interaction as factors for its success.Open Acces

Bioinspired Origami: Information Retrieval Techniques for Design of Foldable Engineering Applications

The science of folding has inspired and challenged scholars for decades. Origami, the art of folding paper, has led to the development of many foldable engineering solutions with applications in manufacturing, materials, and product design. Interestingly, three fundamental origami crease patterns are analogous to folding observed in nature. Numerous folding patterns, structures, and behaviors exist in nature that have not been considered for engineering solutions simply because they are not well-known or studied by designers. While research has shown applying biological solutions to engineering problems is significantly valuable, various challenges prevent the transfer of knowledge from biology to the engineering domain. One of those challenges is the retrieval of useful design inspiration. In this dissertation work, information retrieval techniques are employed to retrieve useful biological design solutions and a text-based search algorithm is developed to return passages where folding in nature is observed. The search algorithm, called FoldSearch, integrates tailored biological keywords and filtering methods to retrieve passages from an extensive biological corpus. The performance of FoldSearch is evaluated using statistical methods for information retrieval and validated using inter-rater reliability analysis. The utility of FoldSearch is demonstrated through two case studies where the retrieved biological examples undergo a design abstraction process that leads to the development of bioinspired origami crease patterns and novel foldable structures. The design abstraction process is presented as an additional research contribution and demonstrates the potential to provide bioinspired design solutions for the growing research field of origami engineering

Rotorigami: A rotary origami protective system for robotic rotorcraft

Applications of aerial robots are progressively expanding into complex urban and natural environments. Despite remarkable advancements in the field, robotic rotorcraft is still drastically limited by the environment in which they operate. Obstacle detection and avoidance systems have functionality limitations and substantially add to the computational complexity of the onboard equipment of flying vehicles. Furthermore, they often cannot identify difficult-to-detect obstacles such as windows and wires. Robustness to physical contact with the environment is essential to mitigate these limitations and continue mission completion. However, many current mechanical impact protection concepts are either not sufficiently effective or too heavy and cumbersome, severely limiting the flight time and the capability of flying in constrained and narrow spaces. Therefore, novel impact protection systems are needed to enable flying robots to navigate in confined or heavily cluttered environments easily, safely, and efficiently while minimizing the performance penalty caused by the protection method. Here, we report the development of a protection system for robotic rotorcraft consisting of a free-to-spin circular protector that is able to decouple impact yawing moments from the vehicle, combined with a cyclic origami impact cushion capable of reducing the peak impact force experienced by the vehicle. Experimental results using a sensor-equipped miniature quadrotor demonstrated the impact resilience effectiveness of the Rotary Origami Protective System (Rotorigami) for a variety of collision scenarios. We anticipate this work to be a starting point for the exploitation of origami structures in the passive or active impact protection of robotic vehicles