PufferBot: Actuated Expandable Structures for Aerial Robots
This addresses safety and versatility issues for drone operators in cluttered or human-proximate environments, but it is incremental as it builds on existing propeller guard concepts.
The researchers tackled the problem of protecting drone propellers near obstacles or humans by developing PufferBot, an aerial robot with an expandable scissor structure, resulting in four designs and three scenarios demonstrating extended utility over static guards.
We present PufferBot, an aerial robot with an expandable structure that may expand to protect a drone's propellers when the robot is close to obstacles or collocated humans. PufferBot is made of a custom 3D-printed expandable scissor structure, which utilizes a one degree of freedom actuator with rack and pinion mechanism. We propose four designs for the expandable structure, each with unique characterizations for different situations. Finally, we present three motivating scenarios in which PufferBot may extend the utility of existing static propeller guard structures. The supplementary video can be found at: https://youtu.be/XtPepCxWcBg