This work introduces a mixed‐transducer micro‐origami to achieve efficient vibration, controllable motion, and decoupled sensing. Existing micro‐origami systems tend to have only one type of transducer (actuator/sensor), which limits their versatility and functionality because any given transducer system has a narrow range of advantageous working conditions. However, it is possible to harness the benefit of different micro‐transducer systems to enhance the performance of functional micro‐origami. More specifically, this work introduces a micro‐origami system that can integrate the advantages of three transducer systems: strained morph (SM) systems, polymer based electro‐thermal (ET) systems, and thin‐film lead zirconate titanate (PZT) systems. A versatile photolithography fabrication process is introduced to build this mixed‐transducer micro‐origami system, and their performance is investigated through experiments and simulation models. This work shows that mixed‐transducer micro‐origami can achieve power efficient vibration with high frequency, large vibration ranges, and little degradation; can produce decoupled folding motion with good controllability; and can accomplish simultaneous sensing and actuation to detect and interact with external environments and small‐scale samples. The superior performance of mixed‐transducer micro‐origami systems makes them promising tools for micro‐manipulation, micro‐assembly, biomedical probes, self‐sensing metamaterials, and more.
Mobile Manipulation-based Deployment of Micro Aerial Robot Scouts through Constricted Aperture-like Ingress Points
This paper presents a novel strategy for the autonomous deployment of Micro Aerial Vehicle scouts through constricted aperture-like ingress points, by narrowly fitting and launching them with a high-precision Mobile Manipulation robot. A significant problem during exploration and reconnaissance into highly unstructured environments, such as indoor collapsed ones, is the encountering of impassable areas due to their constricted and rigid nature. We propose that a heterogeneous robotic system-of-systems armed with manipulation capabilities while also ferrying a fleet of micro-sized aerial agents, can deploy the latter through constricted apertures that marginally fit them in size, thus allowing them to act as scouts and resume the reconnaissance mission. This work's contribution is twofold: first, it proposes active-vision based aperture detection to locate candidate ingress points and a hierarchical search-based aperture profile analysis to position a MAV's body through them, and secondly it presents and experimentally demonstrates the novelty of a system-of-systems approach which leverages mobile manipulation to deploy other robots which are otherwise incapable of entering through extremely narrow openings.
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- Award ID(s):
- 2008904
- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10296722
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- 2021 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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Abstract -
null (Ed.)This paper addresses the problem of autonomously deploying an unmanned aerial vehicle in non-trivial settings, by leveraging a manipulator arm mounted on a ground robot, acting as a versatile mobile launch platform. As real-world deployment scenarios for micro aerial vehicles such as searchand- rescue operations often entail exploration and navigation of challenging environments including uneven terrain, cluttered spaces, or even constrained openings and passageways, an often arising problem is that of ensuring a safe take-off location, or safely fitting through narrow openings while in flight. By facilitating launching from the manipulator end-effector, a 6- DoF controllable take-off pose within the arm workspace can be achieved, which allows to properly position and orient the aerial vehicle to initialize the autonomous flight portion of a mission. To accomplish this, we propose a sampling-based planner that respects a) the kinematic constraints of the ground robot / manipulator / aerial robot combination, b) the geometry of the environment as autonomously mapped by the ground robots perception systems, and c) accounts for the aerial robot expected dynamic motion during takeoff. The goal of the proposed planner is to ensure autonomous collision-free initialization of an aerial robotic exploration mission, even within a cluttered constrained environment. At the same time, the ground robot with the mounted manipulator can be used to appropriately position the take-off workspace into areas of interest, effectively acting as a carrier launch platform. We experimentally demonstrate this novel robotic capability through a sequence of experiments that encompass a micro aerial vehicle platform carried and launched from a 6-DoF manipulator arm mounted on a four-wheel robot base.more » « less
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UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles) or drones are promising instruments for video-based surveillance. Various applications of aerial surveillance use object detection programs to detect target objects. In such applications, three parameters influence a drone deployment strategy: the area covered by the drone, the latency of target (object) detection, and the quality of the detection output by the object detector. Previous works have focused on improving Pareto optimality along the area-latency frontier or the area-quality frontier, but not on the combined area-latency-quality frontier, because of which these solutions are sub-optimal for drone-based surveillance. We explore a three way tradeoff between area, latency, and quality in the context of autonomous aerial surveillance of targets in an area using drones with cameras and an object detection program. We propose Vega, a drone deployment framework that captures these tradeoffs to deploy drones efficiently. We make three contributions with Vega. First, we characterize the ability of the state-of-the-art mobile object detector, EfficientDet [CPVR '20], to detect objects from varying drone altitudes using confidence and IoU curves vs. drone altitude. Second, based on these characteristics of the detector, we propose a set of two algorithmic primitives for drone-based maneuvers, namely DroneZoom and DroneCycle. Using these two primitives, we obtain a more optimal Pareto frontier between our three target parameters - coverage area, detection latency, and detection quality for a single drone system. Third, we scale out our findings to a swarm deployment using higher-order Voronoi tessellations, where we control the swarm's spatial density using the Voronoi order to further lower the detection latency while maintaining detection quality.more » « less
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This paper presents the design, modeling, analysis, and experimental validation of an inductive resonant wireless power transfer (WPT) system to power a micro aerial vehicle (MAV). Using WPT, in general, enables longer flight times, virtually eliminates the need for batteries, and minimizes down time for recharging or replacing batteries. The proposed WPT system consists of a transmit coil, which can either be fixed to ground or placed on a mobile platform, and a receive coil carried by the MAV. The details of the WPT circuit design are presented. A power-transfer model is developed for the two-coil system, where the model is used to select suitable coil geometries to maximize the power received by the MAV for hovering. Analysis, simulation, and experimental results are presented to demonstrate the effectiveness of the WPT circuitry. Finally, a wirelessly powered MAV that hovers above the transmit coil is demonstrated in a laboratory setting.more » « less
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