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The DASH robot features a minimalistic design that integrates a ducted fan with a springy leg to achieve versatile aerial and terrestrial locomotion. This innovative approach allows for efficient energy use and agile movement, enabling the robot to perform tasks such as periodic hopping and aerial flight while autonomously transitioning between modes. Key results demonstrate that the contact-implicit model predictive controller effectively optimizes locomotion across different environments, showcasing the robot's adaptability and efficiency.
A single robot can seamlessly transition between aerial flight and ground hopping, optimizing energy use and agility in real-time.
We present a novel and minimalistic design of an aerial-terrestrial robot DASH: Ducted Aerial Spring Hopper. The goal is to enable both aerial and ground locomotion capabilities on a unified mobile robot that is mechanically-minimalistic, locomotion-versatile, and energy-efficient. We propose an organic integration of ducted fan co-axial body with a springy leg at the bottom for realization. The ducted fan module provides thrust-vectoring as the main actuation for agile flying; when it is combined with the light-weight spring leg, the robot realizes highly efficient ground hopping with energy circulation. Moreover, to realize optimal locomotion with two modes, we employ a contact-implicit model predictive controller to automatically choose locomotion modes and actuation. We successfully validated the design and control of DASH through a range of tasks, including periodic hopping, aerial flight, and mode-free locomotion with autonomous mode transitions during obstacle traversal.
