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Development of a Universal-Purpose Settlement Gripper Using a Flexible Sub-arm and Triggering Mechanism

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Abstract

Drones are used for various purposes including surveillance and surveying. A drone usually hovers in place during its mission, consuming a large amount of energy to maintain its position. This can be fatal, particularly for small-to-medium-sized drones with relatively short flight time capability. If drones could settle on other structures while performing their missions, this would save a significant amount of energy. To this end, drones can be equipped with the ability to hang onto or from various structures using a gripper device. However, urban areas have many structures with vertical planes such as building walls and streetlights, making it difficult for the drone to settle. Therefore, a method of settling on the walls of structures, as opposed to hanging, would be preferable in this case. Further, for a gripper to settle not only on a plane but also on curved surfaces, the angle of the gripper must be adjustable to fit the shape of the structure. In this work, a gripper was designed to have a center arm and a sub-arm. To increase stability further during settlement, the sub-arm was composed of a rigid body and a flexible pad. Sets of experiments were conducted to optimize the attachment pad type and the shape of the flexible pad. Further, a supporting beam was incorporated into the gripper to prevent the drone from sagging under its own weight. By utilizing the impact force generated upon colliding with the structure, the gripper designed in this research could stably settle over a wide range of flight velocities. The sub-arm with the flexible pad could adjust the gripping angle, and the gripper could cope with various surfaces with curvatures larger than 70 mm.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) grant funded by the Korean government (Ministry of Science and ICT and Ministry of Education) (No. NRF-2022R1F1A1063896 and No. 5199990714521) and by 2020 Korea Aerospace University Faculty Research Grant (2020-2069-0001).

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  1. School of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering, Korea Aerospace University, Goyang-si, Gyeonggi-do, Republic of Korea

    Sae Eun Kim & Hae-Sung Yoon

  2. Department of Smart Air Mobility, Korea Aerospace University, Goyang-si, Gyeonggi-do, Republic of Korea

    Hae-Sung Yoon

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  1. Sae Eun Kim
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Correspondence to Hae-Sung Yoon.

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Kim, S.E., Yoon, HS. Development of a Universal-Purpose Settlement Gripper Using a Flexible Sub-arm and Triggering Mechanism. Int. J. Precis. Eng. Manuf. 23, 1431–1441 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12541-022-00714-2

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