How does this even work?

For many reasons, Singapore is the perfect place for robot taxies, and likely will be one of the first places to have public air taxi service.  A compact, thoroughly wired urban area, with a tech savvy population and friendly government.

Not coincidently, then, Singaporean researchers are definitely pushing forward on UAV technologies.  I look to Singapore to see where UAVs are going to be.

There are a lot of ways to build robot helicopters. Quadcopters are the overwhelming favorite on the market today, but there are a lot of ways copters can work.

We’ve seen designs with one rotor (!) up to 18 rotors (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) : – )

This summer, researchers at Singapore University of Technology and Design report on a transformer UAV: one UAV, many different possible copters [1]!

This is a copter that can be configured with 1-4 rotary wings, and with different rotary and pitch angles.  Wow!

Some configurations are weirder than others, but their design knows how to fly in 14 different ways.  So there!

It’s not so much that there are different ways to fly, but that they have a modular set of hardware that snaps together in multiple ways, and they know how to make all of them fly.

I’m not sure how practical this approach may be.  This sort of madly spinning wing is not ideal for passengers or freight, and not great for some kinds of surveillance.  And, of course, any given configuration will never match a purpose build UAV. 

The main advantages seem to be efficiency (longer flight time) and flexibility. I have to wonder what scenarios would benefit from these features.

One thing the researchers have not explored is swarming.  This design makes possible swarms with a flexible mix of copters constructed from the same collective of generic parts.

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1. Xinyu Cai, Shane Kyi Hla Win, Hitesh Bhardwaj, and Shaohui Foong, Modeling, Control and Implementation of Adaptive Reconfigurable ROtary Wings (ARROWs). IEEE/ASME Transactions on Mechatronics:1-11,  2023. https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/10026627

Robot Wednesday

The Darndest Thing I Ever Seen…It’s a Monocopter!

I have to admit that I get somewhat jaded about robots these days.  The basic technology has advanced to become an art form, not least because the tech is cheap and available to a lot of people. 

Within academia, that means that the contingencies require students to innovate madly, trying out every crazy idea anyone has ever had.  And the thing is, today’s materials, motors, and computers can implement some pretty darned crazy stuff.

This fall researchers from Singapore University of Technology and Design report on a monocopter  [2]. I never heard the term ‘monocopter’, which means basically a flying wing based on maple seed configuration.

As Evan Ackerman quips, who needs “two whole wings or an obviously ludicrous four separate motors” [1].  : – )

And, of course, the icing on the cake is that they made it roll up, so it stores very compactly.

How does this even work???

Of course, this particular aircraft isn’t ideal for aerial photography, at least not without specialized cameras (which I’m sure are coming).  And I’m not expecting a passenger version any time soon.

I also have to wonder about safety.  It has the look of an out of control, powered, boomerang; kareening around at neck level.  Yoiks!

But, sheesh.  This is one of the dardenst things I’ve ever seen.

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1. Evan Ackerman, Flexible Monocopter Drone Can Be Completely Rolled Up, in IEEE Spectrum – Robotics, November 11, 2021. https://spectrum.ieee.org/foldable-monocopter-drone
2. Shane Kyi Hla Win, Luke Soe Thura Win, Danial Sufiyan, and Shaohui Foong, Design and control of the first foldable single-actuator rotary wing micro aerial vehicle. Bioinspiration & Biomimetics, 16 (6):066019, 2021/11/01 2021. http://dx.doi.org/10.1088/1748-3190/ac253a

Robot Wednesday

Bioinspired Aerial Snooper

In the past couple of decades there has been a lot of interest in developing small, disposable sensors that can be scattered over an area, e.g., thrown out the door of an air craft (or dropped from orbit).  One approach is gliders (think paper airplanes), another is bouncy balls (perhaps tensegrity).

This summer researchers at Singapore report on a design inspired by maple seeds (which I learned are called “samaras”) [1]. The idea is for the probe to whirl around, drifting to the ground.  Just as maple seeds, a batch will randomly fill in a volume.

The idea would be to include tiny sensors in the wings, and sprinkle them from an aircraft or other release point.  No fuel, no guidance, very cheap.

Neat! 

The researchers note that there are limitations.  Unpowered and unsteered dump seed-sensors are at the mercy of the wind and other variables.  (Defensive measure:  a big fan to blow them away!) 

And they can’t carry much payload.  Worse, really light weight sensors are also very expensive, which may be too high to be disposable.

Whatever payload you do get on there will need to cope with the dizzying spin during flight.  Something like pressure or temperature or chemical sensor might work.  Btu forget about precision video!

I’ll note that the study did a lot of simulation of wing shapes and performance.  These calculations may be of interest to biomechanics studies of similar natural systems, offering insights into the performance of different body forms.

Cool.

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1. Shane Kyi Hla Win, Luke Soe Thura Win, Danial Sufiyan, Gim Song Soh, and Shaohui Foong, An Agile Samara-Inspired Single-Actuator Aerial Robot Capable of Autorotation and Diving. IEEE Transactions on Robotics:1-14,  2021. https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9480601