Morphing resilient structures for multi-modal Robots – ResiRob

Resilience is the capacity to withstand or to recover quickly from unexpected difficulties. When applied to mobile robotics, it can be defined as the ability of robots to absorb shocks when flying or rolling, to collide with obstacles without irreversible structural damage or to be impacted by flying objects without crashing. Physical survival is today fundamental for robots whenever they operate into an unstructured environment, but still a challenge.
The heart of the ResiRob project is to create new deformable robots that will not only absorb shocks but also sense collisions via their proprioception to generate appropriate trajectories. The ResiRob’s proprioception will allow the robot to perceive and locate lateral collisions as well as ventral or dorsal shocks due to collisions with moving objects for example. As multimodal locomotion can be a key for efficient exploration, a combination of ground and aerial locomotion will be implemented to improve endurance and allow passive locomotion in situations like falling or descending steep stairs.
The ResiBot project aims at introducing new ways to solve navigation in unstructured environments: a generation of robots will be designed by a close work between control and design, relying on distinct innovative features: propeller protection using flexible and dissipative ducts, soft envelope for robot protection and perception, actuated inner architecture for multimodal locomotion, including perching capability.
The development of resilient multimodal robots is still a challenge. To success, the ResiRob project gathers people with complementary expertise (mechanics, embedded control, sensors...) and at the same time with a strong common background and endeavor in making innovative robots. We plan to introduce this new expertise on both resilient and multimodal design into France by developing aspects which have not been properly covered so far.