Stanford Engineers Have Created a Unique Robotic Landing Gear System for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

drone bird

William Rod­er­ick, a stu­dent at Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty in the Unit­ed States, inspired by the paws of birds of prey, has devel­oped a unique robot­ic land­ing gear sys­tem for unmanned aer­i­al vehi­cles. The aim of the work was to show that this sys­tem, called the Stereo­typed Nature-inspired Aer­i­al Grasper (abbr. SNAG), can func­tion as a chas­sis capa­ble of adapt­ing to var­i­ous sur­faces. For exam­ple, to allow a drone to land on a tree branch.

How it works?

The sys­tem is based on motors, springs and sen­sors. The springs and motors act as ten­dons, absorb­ing shock and pro­vid­ing a firm hold in about 20 mil­lisec­onds. The sen­sors are respon­si­ble for man­ag­ing the bal­ance of the sys­tem. The demon­stra­tion work of a new type of chas­sis made it pos­si­ble to add the abil­i­ty to catch objects lat­er.

Application

The range of appli­ca­tions for SNAG, accord­ing to the devel­op­ment team, are numer­ous, since the sys­tem allows the drone to land in dif­fi­cult non-stan­dard envi­ron­men­tal con­di­tions, which, for exam­ple, pro­vides the oppor­tu­ni­ty to save ener­gy when per­form­ing mis­sions involv­ing long-term mon­i­tor­ing.