An indoor flying platform with collision robustness and self-recovery

Abstract

This paper presents a new paradigm in the design of indoor flying robots that replaces collision avoidance with collision robustness. Indoor flying robots must operate within constrained and cluttered environments where even nature's most sophisticated flyers such as insects cannot avoid all obstacles and should thus be able to withstand collisions and recover from them autonomously. A prototype platform specifically designed to withstand collisions and recover without human intervention is presented. Its dimensions are optimized to fulfill the varying constraints of aerodynamics, robustness and self-recovery, and new construction techniques focusing on shock absorption are presented. Finally, the platform is tested both in-flight and during collisions to characterize its collision robustness and self-recovery capability.