Aerial Tensile Perching and Disentangling Mechanism for Long-Term Environmental Monitoring
Aerial robots show significant potential for forest canopy research and environmental monitoring by providing data collection capabilities at high spatial and temporal resolutions. However, limited flight endurance hinders their application. Inspired by natural perching behaviors, we propose a multimodal aerial robot system that integrates tensile perching for energy conservation and a suspended actuated pod for data collection. The system consists of a quadrotor drone, a slewing ring mechanism allowing 360° tether rotation, and a streamlined pod with two ducted propellers connected via a tether.
The integrated system expands the operational capabilities and enhances the energy efficiency of aerial robots for long-term monitoring tasks.
Published article: https://arxiv.org/abs/2403.01890 presented in International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) 2024
Gotta catch ’em all, safely! Aerial-deployed soft underwater gripper
Underwater soft grippers show significant potential for underwater monitoring, research and object retrieval tasks. These systems are usually integrated on unmanned underwater vehicles or deployed and remotely actuated from a water surface vehicle. These methods result in disruptions to water ecosystems, affecting features like reefs, algae, and various species, including crabs and turtles due to their large and cumbersome size. In this project, we propose a new solution for shallow water underwater grasping tasks. Our approach involves a lightweight underwater soft gripper affixed to a custom submarine pod that can be deployed from a drone. The utilization of a drone for deployment, combined with a small locomotion-capable gripper-pod system, significantly mitigates water disturbance, and allows for swift and efficient travel to the mission target area.
Published article: https://arxiv.org/abs/2403.01891 Presented in IEEE International Conference on Soft Robotics (Robosoft) 2024
Sailing flying vehicle for water environmental sensing
SailMAV is a project that originated from the Aerial Robotics Lab at Imperial College London in 2018. The project involves a flying sailing platform designed to perform a complete water environmental mission, from flying to landing on water, sailing, and finally taking off from water. The platform is custom-made, from the hulls to the wings and tail, as well as the electronics.
In recent years, the team has successfully tested the platform twice in Lake Vrana, Croatia, to map the biodiversity of the lake and recognize bird species, track human exploitation and provide information in two different seasons of the year. Luca played a crucial role in designing a controller to adapt to various weather conditions and environmental mission purposes.
The team is currently exploring further studies, including the creation of a VTOL version that facilitates takeoff from water, which has proven to be the most challenging aspect of the project.
VTOL fixed-wing UAAV (unmanned aerial-aquatic vehicle)
AquaMAV is an ambitious project that originated from the Aerial Robotics Lab at Imperial College London in 2013. The project involves developing a drone that can perform fixed-wing flight and underwater navigation. The current platform under development is a tail sitter tilting rotors drone with hovering capabilities, making the robot's missions safer and more autonomous. Luca is supervising a master's thesis student who is working on the development of this project.
Camber-changing flapping hydrofoils for efficient water surface propulsion
Flapping hydrofoils is a project developed within the TUM eAviation group. The primary goal of the project is to create an efficient water propulsion system that can be coupled with a water surface platform, such as SailMAV. The platform will take advantage of the lift generated to produce forward propulsion, enabling water surface motion. Additionally, the platform has the potential to harvest wave energy and facilitate seaplane takeoff from water.
The soft and bioinspired perching mechanism for bird sized flapping-wing MAVs originated at the eAviation Laboratory at TUM. The goal of the project is to enable perching in flapping-wing drones to further their mission capabilities. The developed concept combines a fish-jaw inspired four-bar linkage with an active-passive actuation method to achieve a large gripping power at low energy consumption. Furthermore, soft and compliant grippers based on the Fin Ray Effect are installed to result in a high adaptability to different perching objects. A prototype of this system has been successfully tested in a free-flight environment on a multirotor platform and a small flapping-wing MAV. Currently tests are performed to gather additional insights into the perching performance along with the development of further capabilities.
Related IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters (RA-L) Journal Paper
