SCORPION - Soft COnfigurable Aerial Robot With PIONeering Capabilities: Dynamic Perching and Full-Actuation

Abstract

Unconventional aerial robots with morphing capabilities hold the potential to expand physical interaction functionalities, such as perching and aerial manipulation, but face challenges due to the added weight and complexity of actuators and sensing systems. This work's hypothesis is that maximum performance can be achieved by developing a dual system that enables perching maneuvers with a rapid, dynamic grasp of structures, eliminating stabilization issues associated with static landing followed by gripping, while simultaneously leveraging the same morphing actuators to enable fully actuated flight to enhance aerodynamic efficiency (by minimizing tilting-induced drag) and interaction with the environment for aerial manipulation. This letter presents a novel soft morphing aerial robot, SCORPION, with these capabilities, powered by Electric Ducted Fans (EDFs) embedded within deformable arms. This design makes the arms more adaptable and impact-resistant by eliminating external moving parts. The arms are actuated by a high-torque tendon system and include custom capacitive stretchable silicone-carbon black sensors. This dual-purpose system allows SCORPION to perch on structures by stabilizing rapidly and dynamically (in under 150 ms) with a mid-air grasp, as well as to fly fully actuated. With only a 12% increase in weight and less than a 10% increase in power consumption, SCORPION demonstrates up to a 15% improvement in forward flight efficiency.