Collaborative Research: Design, Flight Control, and Autonomous Navigation of Bioinspired Morphing Micro Aerial Vehicles for Operation in Confined Spaces

合作研究：用于密闭空间操作的仿生变形微型飞行器的设计、飞行控制和自主导航

• 批准号: 2140650
• 负责人: Koushil Sreenath
• 金额: $ 38.26万
• 依托单位: University of California-Berkeley
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2022
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2022-05-15 至 2025-04-30
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2140650&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Collaborative; Research; Design; Flight; Control

This project will promote the progress of science in aerial robotics and advance the national prosperity and welfare, by creating bat-inspired drones that can operate in extremely confined spaces. There is an increased demand for fast, continuous environmental surveillance in city sewers. These confined spaces occupy a large portion of a city's infrastructure. However, today's conventional robots, including ground and aerial systems, cannot operate in a vast majority of sewers. Sewer networks present a veritable maze of pipes, chambers, and utility holes that pose tremendous challenges for robot locomotion control and navigation. Therefore, human operators still inspect these dangerous spaces. In addition to carrying many risks for humans, manned operations in these environments are costly and slow. This grant’s research will contribute to the design of aerial, bat-inspired robots that can operate in sewers, by mimicking bat aerial locomotion principles in caves. The results from this research will greatly benefit the society. Especially during a pandemic, the continuous and automated monitoring of a city’s aging sewer systems using these bat-inspired drones can play a vital role in saving human lives. For instance, SARS-CoVs can be present in wastewater for several days, and its early detection in sewers in 2019 could have allowed for increased preparedness in combating the current pandemic. This project trains new generation scientists, engineers, and technologists with interdisciplinary skills, providing future professionals with vertically integrated, use-inspired experiential learning activities.Today's rotary-wing drones are better solutions for inspection and monitoring city infrastructure than ground robots because they are scalable, inexpensive, easy to deploy, and possess fast mobility. However, these systems cannot fly inside tight areas such as tunnels with small cross-sections because they rely on powerful and continuous air jets. So far, the confined space applications of these drones include only flying inside buildings or very spacious confined environments, which are not comparable to the application of aerial robots in sewers. This research will allow drones to complete fully autonomous flights inside tight spaces such as sewer galleries. The research team will (i) use an integrated mechanical intelligence and control framework to design drones with dynamically versatile body conformations and significant computational complexity to prevent creation of powerful air jets, (ii) design an integrated model-based and data-driven flight control framework that captures not only the model uncertainty but also the environmental aerodynamic effects that arise due to flight in tunnels, and (iii) develop a novel navigation framework that relies on high-level abstract guidance extracted from sewer schematic diagrams, enabling robust navigation in unmapped environments.This project is supported by the cross-directorate Foundational Research in Robotics program, jointly managed and funded by the Directorates for Engineering (ENG) and Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE).This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

该项目将通过创造可以在极其有限的空间中运行的蝙蝠无人机来促进空中机器人技术的进步，并促进国家的繁荣和福祉。城市下水道对快速、持续的环境监测的需求不断增加。然而，当今的传统机器人，包括地面和空中系统，无法在绝大多数下水道网络中运行，这些下水道网络呈现出名副其实的迷宫般的管道、房间和公用设施孔洞，这给人们带来了巨大的挑战。机器人因此，人类操作员仍然要检查这些危险的空间，除了给人类带来许多风险之外，这些环境中的载人操作成本高昂且缓慢，这项研究将有助于设计受蝙蝠启发的空中机器人。通过模仿蝙蝠在洞穴中的空中运动原理，可以在下水道中运行。这项研究的结果将极大地造福于社会，特别是在大流行期间，使用这些蝙蝠启发的无人机对城市老化的下水道系统进行连续和自动监测可以发挥重要作用。在储蓄中发挥重要作用例如，SARS-CoV 可以在废水中存在数天，2019 年在下水道中的早期检测可能有助于加强应对当前流行病的准备工作。跨学科技能，为未来的专业人员提供垂直整合的、以使用为灵感的体验式学习活动。当今的旋翼无人机是比地面机器人更好的检查和监控城市基础设施的解决方案，因为它们具有可扩展性、价格低廉、易于部署、然而，这些系统无法在狭窄的区域内飞行，例如小横截面的隧道，因为它们依赖于强大且连续的喷气机，到目前为止，这些无人机的有限空间应用仅包括在建筑物内或非常宽敞的空间内飞行。与空中机器人在下水道中的应用无法相比，这项研究将允许无人机在下水道廊道等狭窄空间内完成完全自主的飞行。设计具有动态多功能身体构造的无人机显着的计算复杂性，以防止产生强大的喷气机，（ii）设计一个基于模型和数据驱动的集成飞行控制框架，该框架不仅捕获模型的不确定性，还捕获由于隧道中飞行而产生的环境空气动力效应，以及（ iii) 开发一种新颖的导航框架，该框架依赖于从下水道示意图中提取的高级抽象指导，从而在未绘制地图的环境中实现稳健的导航。该项目得到跨部门机器人基础研究计划的支持，由各部门共同管理和资助用于工程（ENG）和计算机与信息科学与工程（CISE）。该奖项反映了 NSF 的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。