MORE | Fall 2024

Design, Contact Modeling, and Collision-Inclusive Planning of a Dual-Stiffness Aerial RoboT (DART)

Collision-resilient quadrotors have gained significant attention for operating in cluttered environments and leveraging impacts to perform agile maneuvers. However, existing designs are typically single-mode: either safeguarded by propeller guards that prevent deformation or deformable but lacking rigidity. This project introduces DART, a Dual-stiffness Aerial RoboT, that adapts its post-collision response by either engaging a locking mechanism for a rigid mode or disengaging it for a flexible mode, respectively. Comprehensive characterization tests highlight the significant difference in post-collision responses between its rigid and flexible modes. A novel collision response prediction model based on the linear complementarity system theory is proposed to understand and harness the collision dynamics. Experimental results confirm the accuracy of the model and underscore its potential to advance collision-inclusive trajectory planning in aerial robotics.