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[2024-Vol.21-Issue 3]Design and Control of an Autonomous Bat-like Perching UAV
Post: 2024-05-30 10:45  View:1114

Journal of Bionic Engineering (2024) 21:1253–1264 https://doi.org/10.1007/s42235-024-00502-w

Design and Control of an Autonomous Bat-like Perching UAV

Long Bai1 · Wei Wang1 · Xiaohong Chen1 · Yuanxi Sun1 

1 State Key Laboratory of Mechanical Transmission, Chongqing University, Chongqing 400044, China

Abstract

Perching allows small Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) to maintain their altitude while signifcantly extending their fight duration and reducing noise. However, current research on fying habitats is poorly adapted to unstructured environments, and lacks autonomous capabilities, requiring ideal experimental environments and remote control by personnel. To solve these problems, in this paper, we propose a bat-like UAV perching mechanism by investigating the bat upside-down perching method, which realizes double self-locking in the perching state using the ratchet and four-link dead point mechanisms. Based on this perching mechanism, this study proposes a control strategy for UAVs to track targets and accomplish fight perching autonomously by combining a binocular camera, single-point LiDAR, and pressure sensors. Autonomous perching experiments were conducted for crossbar-type objects outdoors. The experimental results show that a multirotor UAV equipped with the perching mechanism and sensors can reliably achieve autonomous fight perching and re-fying of the target outdoors. The power consumption is reduced to 2.9% of the hovering state when perched on the target object.

Keywords Bio-inspired design · Perching mechanism · UAV · Autonomous fight 

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