Abstract
Perching in unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) offers the possibility of extending the range of aerial robots beyond the limits of their batteries. It has been a topic of intense study for multirotor UAVs. Perching in winged UAVs is harder because a kinetic energy balance has to be struck. Reducing too much energy results in the vehicle stalling and falling. Too much kinetic energy at touchdown could damage the vehicle. Most studies used dangerous pitch‐up maneuvers to manage this balance. This work presents a system that eliminates the pitch‐up maneuver by mechanically capturing and storing kinetic energy at impact. It is validated using a passive mechanical system consisting of a storage mechanism for energy recuperation and a claw for perching on a horizontal rod. The energy stored in the mechanism is then used to unperch. The mathematical model for the recuperation strategy is presented and perching success at various approach attitudes are characterized. The proof‐of‐concept claw recaptures 5% of the kinetic energy during perching. Experiments indicate that the device can successfully perch at a wide range of yaw angles, but requires more precision in roll. We show that our perching mechanism enables the fastest UAV perching to date (7.4 m s−1).
Highlights
Perching in unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) offers the possibility of extending the range of aerial robots beyond the limits of their batteries
Many interesting perching mechanisms have been proposed for multirotor and flapping wing vehicles,[1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11] but fewer have been studied for winged unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs)
In this article we introduce and analyze the concept of recapturing lost energy of winged UAVs when perching, we characterize the performance of the novel perching mechanism in terms of impact speed, yaw angle, and holding strength, and we validate the mechanism at both low and high speeds
Summary
Studies on perching in fixed-wing UAVs have predominantly focused on reducing kinetic energy at landing through the use of pitch-up maneuvers. In the Insitu system, a vertically hanging cable contacts the wing and slides along the wing leading edge to the wingtip where the cable gets hooked, stopping the UAV.[19] The Zipline system instead relies on a horizontal cable that gets hooked on the tail of the aircraft.[20] Unlike the completely passive Insitu system, the Zipline cable is held by actively controlled robot arms that catch the aircraft. All these solutions reduce aircraft control complexity by commanding the aircraft to fly into the structure. None of these systems capture any of the kinetic energy from flight, and the only one which could unperch cannot perch on bars and rods
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
