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Progress on “Pico” Air Vehicles

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Robotics Research

Part of the book series: Springer Tracts in Advanced Robotics ((STAR,volume 100))

Abstract

As the characteristic size of a flying robot decreases, the challenges for successful flight revert to basic questions of fabrication, actuation, fluid mechanics, stabilization, and power—whereas such questions have in general been answered for larger aircraft. When developing a flying robot on the scale of a common housefly, all hardware must be developed from scratch as there is nothing “off-the-shelf” which can be used for mechanisms, sensors, or computation that would satisfy the extreme mass and power limitations. This technology void also applies to techniques available for fabrication and assembly of the aeromechanical components: the scale and complexity of the mechanical features requires new ways to design and prototype at scales between macro and MEMS, but with rich topologies and material choices one would expect in designing human-scale vehicles. With these challenges in mind, we present progress in the essential technologies for insect-scale robots, or “pico” air vehicles.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Section 220 of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2001 states that, “It shall be the goal of the Armed Forces to achieve the fielding of unmanned, remotely controlled technology such that… by 2010, one-third of the aircraft in the operational deep strike force aircraft fleet are unmanned” [5].

  2. 2.

    http://www.defense.gov/releases/release.aspx?releaseid=1538.

  3. 3.

    DARPA BAA-06-06.

  4. 4.

    http://www.avinc.com/nano/.

  5. 5.

    http://www.atl.lmco.com/papers/1448.pdf.

  6. 6.

    http://www.draper.com/Documents/explorations_summer2010.pdf.

  7. 7.

    http://www.wowwee.com/en/products/toys/flight/flytech.

  8. 8.

    http://robobees.seas.harvard.edu.

  9. 9.

    For example, Microlution 5100: http://microlution-inc.com/products/5100.php.

  10. 10.

    http://www.teslamotors.com/roadster/specs.

  11. 11.

    SBL02-06H1 from Namiki: http://www.namiki.net/product/dcmotor/pdf/sbl02-06ssd04_01_e.pdf.

  12. 12.

    Note that this does not include drive circuitry, which is also exacerbated at small scales.

  13. 13.

    “Squiggle” motors: http://www.newscaletech.com/squiggle_overview.html.

  14. 14.

    http://www.centeye.com.

  15. 15.

    http://www.memscapinc.com.

  16. 16.

    http://www.mems.sandia.gov/tech-info/summit-v.html.

  17. 17.

    Note that this only refers to storage, not transduction or harvesting.

  18. 18.

    http://www.fullriver.com/.

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Acknowledgements

This work was partially supported by the National Science Foundation (award number CCF-0926148), the Army Research Laboratory (award number W911NF-08-2-0004), the Office of Naval Research (award number N00014-08-1-0919-DOD35CAP), and the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (award number FA9550-09-1-0156-DOD35CAP). Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, 33 Oxford St, Cambridge, MA, 02138, USA

    Robert J. Wood, Benjamin Finio, Michael Karpelson, Kevin Ma, Néstor O. Pérez-Arancibia, Pratheev S. Sreetharan, Hiro Tanaka & John P. Whitney

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  1. Robert J. Wood
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Correspondence to Robert J. Wood .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Robotics and Intelligent Machines, Georgia Institute of Technology College of Computing, Atlanta, Georgia, USA

    Henrik I. Christensen

  2. Department of Computer Science, Stanford University, Stanford, California, USA

    Oussama Khatib

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Wood, R.J. et al. (2017). Progress on “Pico” Air Vehicles. In: Christensen, H., Khatib, O. (eds) Robotics Research . Springer Tracts in Advanced Robotics, vol 100. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-29363-9_1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-29363-9_1

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