A flying robot with the motif of "maple seeds" flutters and flies to its destination (ITmedia NEWS) --Yahoo! News

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Drop it from the drone and guide it to your destination in two flight modes (blue and green)

Developed by a research team at Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD) in Singapore, "An Agile Samara-Inspired Single-Actuator Aerial Robot Capable of Autorotation and Diving" is a flying robot that uses a maple seed-themed fall. .. A robot consisting of a single blade and a compact electronic device falls from a drone and uses two types of flight methods to aim for landing at a destination. [Image] Experiment of dropping a robot from a drone 100m above the ground In many fields such as military purposes and disaster relief activities, it is possible to deploy a large number of lightweight sensors and payloads to the desired location as soon as possible even in a poor environment. It's essential. Until now, drones and parachutes have been used, but drones are expensive and difficult to control, and parachutes are difficult to package. In order to tackle these challenges, we propose a new falling flight robot inspired by the fall of maple seeds. Maple seeds are known to have a high speed of deceleration after a plunge, and the research team noted that this characteristic might work effectively for fall control. The robot consists of a single blade designed with flat balsa wood and flaps, and an electronic device at the base. Electronic devices are equipped with microcontrollers, 3-axis magnetometers, boosters, microreceivers, GPS, lithium polymer batteries, and servo motors. The robot uses automatic rotation to fall, similar to maple seeds. At that time, a single flap mechanism is adopted for orbit control during automatic rotation. This flap mechanism realizes two types of flight, A-Mode (Autorotating Mode) and D-Mode (Diving Mode). A-Mode is a method of slowly falling while rotating. Make full use of lateral movement to perform stable flight. D-Mode is a drop method that plummets in the vertical direction. This is a useful flight method when the weather is unstable. Bidirectional switching and direction control between these two modes are controlled by changing the angle of the blade with only one actuator. In A-Mode, the blades are changed horizontally, and in D-Mode, the blades are changed vertically. In the actual switching experiment conducted outdoors, it was verified by dropping it from the top of the building. As a result, switching from A-Modo to D-Mode or vice versa was successful. If it is a video, you will be able to feel the speed change caused by the switching. In the lateral movement experiment, the angle of the blade was adjusted and the movement in any direction was successful. At that time, it rotated in A-Mode at 4.46Hz, and fell at an average gliding angle of 28.9 degrees and about 1.04m / s. In fact, we also conducted an experiment to drop three prototypes from a drone flying 100 m above the ground. We programmed A-Mode immediately after the fall, D-Modo at 50m above the ground, and A-Modo again at 18m above the ground, and set them to fly in different directions to avoid collisions. As a result, the mode was successfully switched, but due to the influence of the wind, it was swept sideways more than expected and deviated from the assumed flight path. Accurate control of lateral movement is an issue for the future. Source and Image Credits: SKH Win, LST Win, D. Sufiyan, GS Soh and S. Foong, "An Agile Samara-Inspired Single-Actuator Aerial Robot Capable of Autorotation and Diving," in IEEE Transactions on Robotics, doi: 10.1109 / TRO.2021.3091275 * Written by Hiroki Yamashita, who presides over the Web media "Seamless" that introduces the latest research in technology. Mr. Yamashita picks up and explains highly novel scientific papers.

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