Crash 2 Squash: An Autonomous Drone for the Traversal of Narrow Passageways

Access and exploration of confined and cluttered spaces is a major challenge in search and rescue, maintenance of infrastructures, and environmental monitoring. However, existing drones can only access passageways that are 30% narrower of their size. Herein, a drone that can squeeze its way through arbitrarily long passages that are half its width is presented. This is achieved by developing a quadrotor that synergistically embodies a soft foldable frame, multimodal mobility, and autonomous navigation. The drone exploits visual perception to detect the entrance of the gap and aerial mobility to align and fly toward it. The entry is made possible by the soft design of the frame, which passively folds without breaking when the drone flies and then collides at a controlled speed with the entrance of the passage, i.e., the “crash to squash” entry maneuver. Once inside, the quadrotor uses terrestrial locomotion for the traversal. The mechanical design of the drone and the performance of the “crash to squash” entry maneuver in passageways of different sizes are experimentally characterized. Finally, the control method is validated by indoor autonomous flights.