A Quadrotor with an Origami-Inspired Protective Mechanism
This addresses safety issues for small aerial robots in collision-prone environments, though it is incremental as it builds on existing origami-inspired mechanisms.
The paper tackled the problem of mid-flight collisions for small aerial robots by designing a passive foldable airframe inspired by origami, resulting in a 51-gram quadrotor that demonstrates protective folding in less than 0.15 seconds upon impact.
Despite advances in localization and navigation, aerial robots inevitably remain susceptible to accidents and collisions. In this work, we propose a passive foldable airframe as a protective mechanism for a small aerial robot. A foldable quadrotor is designed and fabricated using the origami-inspired manufacturing paradigm. Upon an accidental mid-flight collision, the deformable airframe is mechanically activated. The rigid frame reconfigures its structure to protect the central part of the robot that houses sensitive components from a crash to the ground. The proposed robot is fabricated, modeled, and characterized. The 51-gram vehicle demonstrates the desired folding sequence in less than 0.15 s when colliding with a wall when flying.