An Energy Efficient Jumping Drone - A Simple Projectile Motion Approach

Jumping robots are interesting devices that offer several advantages in terms of navigation about cluttered environments. However, they present unique challenges with respect to their design and control. In this paper, we propose a design that uses four planar thrusters/propellers on a jumping robot. Such a system provides better maneuverability due to agility provided by the propellers to guide the motion. From energy consumption perspective, we use the gravity for free fall and a spring mechanism to execute the jumping motion without loss of much energy on impact. The primary contribution of this paper is developing a novel navigation and control method for such jumping robots to go to the desired goal. In this paper, we present a projectile motion planning approach for the control of the proposed system. We propose proportional (P) and proportional-derivative (PD) controllers that compute the launch velocity required for the jumping drone after impact with the ground to follow a projectile motion in each jump to reach the goal position. The jumping drone bounces after impact with the ground, and the drone is then actuated for a certain time till it attains the required launch velocity after which it is made to move freely under the influence of gravity. Such a system shows significant reduction of energy consumption (by 81.35%) as compared to a normal drone navigating to the same goal location. Simulation results validate the effectiveness of the proposed approach. Copyright (c) 2023 The Authors. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/)