A Novel Passive Mechanism for Flying Robots to Perch onto Surfaces

Perching onto objects can allow flying robots to stay at a desired height at low or no cost of energy. This paper presents a novel passive mechanism for aerial perching onto smooth surfaces. This mechanism is made from a bistable mechanism and a soft suction cup. Different from existing designs, it can be easily attached onto and detached from a surface, but it can also hold a large weight when attached to a surface. Further, the mechanism can still work when the suction cup is not precisely aligned with the surface, alleviating the requirement for precise motion control of flying robots. The attachment and detachment are facilitated by the bistable mechanism, while the strong holding is enabled by a locking mechanism that can disable the bistable mechanism. We conduct experiments to characterize the required forces for successful attachments and detachments. We also equip the perching mechanism onto a quadcopter to demonstrate it can be successfully used for perching onto smooth surfaces (e.g., glass).