The flying monkey: A mesoscale robot that can run, fly, and grasp

Yash Mulgaonkar, Brandon Araki, Je Sung Koh, Luis Guerrero-Bonilla, Daniel M. Aukes, Anurag Makineni, Michael T. Tolley, Daniela Rus, Robert J. Wood, Vijay Kumar

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

58 Scopus citations

Abstract

The agility and ease of control make a quadrotor aircraft an attractive platform for studying swarm behavior, modeling, and control. The energetics of sustained flight for small aircraft, however, limit typical applications to only a few minutes. Adding payloads - and the mechanisms used to manipulate them - reduces this flight time even further. In this paper we present the flying monkey, a novel robot platform having three main capabilities: walking, grasping, and flight. This new robotic platform merges one of the world's smallest quadrotor aircraft with a lightweight, single-degree-of-freedom walking mechanism and an SMA-actuated gripper to enable all three functions in a 30 g package. The main goal and key contribution of this paper is to design and prototype the flying monkey that has increased mission life and capabilities through the combination of the functionalities of legged and aerial robots.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Title of host publication2016 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, ICRA 2016
PublisherInstitute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.
Pages4672-4679
Number of pages8
ISBN (Electronic)9781467380263
DOIs
StatePublished - Jun 8 2016
Externally publishedYes
Event2016 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, ICRA 2016 - Stockholm, Sweden
Duration: May 16 2016May 21 2016

Publication series

NameProceedings - IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation
Volume2016-June
ISSN (Print)1050-4729

Other

Other2016 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, ICRA 2016
Country/TerritorySweden
CityStockholm
Period5/16/165/21/16

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Software
  • Artificial Intelligence
  • Electrical and Electronic Engineering
  • Control and Systems Engineering

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