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  4. Learning Tethered Perching for Aerial Robots
 
conference paper

Learning Tethered Perching for Aerial Robots

Hauf, Fabian
•
Kocer, Bahadir
•
Slatter, Alan
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January 1, 2023
2023 Ieee International Conference On Robotics And Automation, Icra
IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA)

Aerial robots have a wide range of applications, such as collecting data in hard-to-reach areas. This requires the longest possible operation time. However, because currently available commercial batteries have limited specific energy of roughly 300Wh kg(-1), a drone's flight time is a bottleneck for sustainable long-term data collection. Inspired by birds in nature, a possible approach to tackle this challenge is to perch drones on trees, and environmental or man-made structures, to save energy whilst in operation. In this paper, we propose an algorithm to automatically generate trajectories for a drone to perch on a tree branch, using the proposed tethered perching mechanism with a pendulum-like structure. This enables a drone to perform an energy-optimised, controlled 180 degrees flip to safely disarm upside down. To fine-tune a set of reachable trajectories, a soft actor critic-based reinforcement algorithm is used. Our experimental results show the feasibility of the set of trajectories with successful perching. Our findings demonstrate that the proposed approach enables energy-efficient landing for long-term data collection tasks.

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Type
conference paper
DOI
10.1109/ICRA48891.2023.10161135
Web of Science ID

WOS:001036713001018

Author(s)
Hauf, Fabian

Imperial College London

Kocer, Bahadir

University of Bristol

Slatter, Alan

Imperial College London

Hai-Nguyen Nguyen

Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)

Pang, Oscar

Imperial College London

Clark, Ronald

University of Oxford

Johns, Edward

Imperial College London

Kovac, Mirko  

École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne

Date Issued

2023-01-01

Publisher

IEEE

Publisher place

New York

Published in
2023 Ieee International Conference On Robotics And Automation, Icra
ISBN of the book

979-8-3503-2365-8

Book part number

2023-May

Series title/Series vol.

IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation ICRA

ISSN (of the series)

1050-4729

2577-087X

Start page

1298

End page

1304

Subjects

VEHICLE

•

Science & Technology

•

Technology

Editorial or Peer reviewed

REVIEWED

Written at

OTHER

EPFL units
LSR  
Event nameEvent acronymEvent placeEvent date
IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA)

London, ENGLAND

2023-05-29 - 2023-06-02

FunderFunding(s)Grant NumberGrant URL

UK Research & Innovation (UKRI)

EP/N018494/1;EP/R026173/1;EP/R009953/1;EP/S031464/1;EP/W001136/1

UK Research & Innovation (UKRI)

NE/R012229/1

EU H2020 AeroTwin project

810321

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Available on Infoscience
February 6, 2025
Use this identifier to reference this record
https://infoscience.epfl.ch/handle/20.500.14299/246624
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