A collision-resilient aerial vehicle with icosahedron tensegrity structure
This addresses the need for more robust drones in applications like search and rescue or inspection, though it is incremental as it builds on existing tensegrity and control methods.
The paper tackled the problem of designing an aerial vehicle resilient to collisions in obstacle-rich environments by developing an icosahedron tensegrity structure and an autonomous controller, resulting in a vehicle that can survive collisions at speeds up to 6.5 m/s and reorient itself after landing upside-down.
Aerial vehicles with collision resilience can operate with more confidence in environments with obstacles that are hard to detect and avoid. This paper presents the methodology used to design a collision resilient aerial vehicle with icosahedron tensegrity structure. A simplified stress analysis of the tensegrity frame under impact forces is performed to guide the selection of its components. In addition, an autonomous controller is presented to reorient the vehicle from an arbitrary orientation on the ground to help it take off. Experiments show that the vehicle can successfully reorient itself after landing upside-down and can survive collisions with speed up to 6.5m/s.