Collision-Resilient Insect-scale Soft Aerial Robots for Collective Flights in Cluttered Environments

用于在杂乱环境中集体飞行的抗碰撞昆虫级软体空中机器人

• 批准号: 2202477
• 负责人: Yufeng Chen
• 金额: $ 40万
• 依托单位: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2022
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2022-07-01 至 2025-06-30
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2202477&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Collision; Resilient; Insect; scale; Soft

This grant will support research on millimeter-scale to centimeter-scale soft aerial robots capable of collective flight in cluttered environments. Unlike flying insects that can navigate in natural environments and perform complex tasks such as pollination, most existing flapping-wing micro aerial robots are fragile to collisions and are limited to flying in open spaces. This award supports the fundamental study of the collision dynamics of insect-scale robots, the design of fast collision-sensing methods and collision-recovery flight controllers, and the creation of new aerial microrobot capabilities, including swarm flight and the ability to perch on compliant or moving objects such as flowers. This research will provide economic and societal benefits by enabling potential new applications such as assisted pollination in vertical farming and inspection of highly cluttered and inaccessible spaces. In addition, the muscle-like soft actuators developed in this work may find applications in other types of mobile robots, in wearable haptic devices, and in microfluidic systems. This project has broader impacts in the education and training of graduate and undergraduate students. The bio-inspired robots will be used for STEM education outreach, including to underrepresented minority communities. This project will also support the development of educational multimedia materials and summer internships for high-school students. The goal of this project is to achieve collision resilience comparable to flying insects, and to further enable new capabilities for sub-gram flapping-wing micro-aerial-vehicles. These include swarm flight, exploration of cluttered natural environments, and pollination. This work combines analytical and experimental approaches and focuses on the following three directions: 1) formulate dynamic models and design experiments to measure collision impacts on sub-gram aerial robots; (2) substantially reduce collision detection time and design a feedforward reflexive recovery controller; and (3) demonstrate robust robot interactions with compliant and moving obstacles. The outcome of this study will result in novel flight demonstrations unseen in previous aerial robots. The new robot will be able to fly near walls, ceilings, and compliant objects such as flowers and leaves. Multiple robots will fly collectively in a cluttered space while demonstrating collision tolerance. The project will also validate the advantages of muscle-like resilient soft actuators for aerial robots. This project is supported by the cross-directorate Foundational Research in Robotics program, jointly managed and funded by the Directorates for Engineering (ENG) and Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE).This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

这笔拨款将支持毫米级到厘米级的软空中机器人的研究，这些机器人能够在混乱的环境中进行集体飞行。与可以在自然环境中导航并执行复杂任务（如授粉）的飞虫不同，大多数现有的扑翼微型空中机器人在碰撞时很脆弱，并且仅限于在开放空间飞行。该奖项支持昆虫级机器人碰撞动力学的基础研究，快速碰撞传感方法和碰撞恢复飞行控制器的设计，以及新的空中微型机器人能力的创造，包括群体飞行和栖息在柔性或移动物体（如花朵）上的能力。这项研究将通过实现潜在的新应用，如垂直农业中的辅助授粉和高度杂乱和难以接近的空间的检查，提供经济和社会效益。此外，在这项工作中开发的类肌肉软致动器可能会在其他类型的移动机器人、可穿戴触觉设备和微流体系统中得到应用。本项目对研究生和本科生的教育和培养具有广泛的影响。仿生机器人将用于STEM教育推广，包括向代表性不足的少数族裔社区推广。该项目还将支持教育多媒体材料的开发和高中生暑期实习。该项目的目标是实现与飞行昆虫相当的碰撞弹性，并进一步实现亚克扑翼微型飞行器的新功能。这些包括蜂群飞行、探索杂乱的自然环境和授粉。本研究将分析与实验相结合，重点研究以下三个方向：1)建立动力学模型和设计实验，测量亚克级空中机器人的碰撞影响；(2)大幅缩短碰撞检测时间，设计前馈自反恢复控制器；(3)展示机器人与柔性和移动障碍物的鲁棒交互。这项研究的结果将导致以前的空中机器人看不到的新颖飞行演示。这种新型机器人将能够在墙壁、天花板和花草等柔顺物体附近飞行。多个机器人将在杂乱的空间中集体飞行，同时展示碰撞容忍度。该项目还将验证用于空中机器人的类似肌肉的弹性软驱动器的优势。该项目由跨部门机器人基础研究项目支持，由工程（ENG）和计算机与信息科学与工程（CISE）联合管理和资助。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

项目成果

Laser-assisted failure recovery for dielectric elastomer actuators in aerial robots

• DOI: 10.1126/scirobotics.adf4278
• 发表时间: 2023-03
• 期刊: Science Robotics
• 影响因子: 25
• 作者: Suhan Kim;Y. Hsiao;Younghoon Lee;Weikun Zhu;Zhijian Ren;F. Niroui;Yufeng Chen