Towards biomimicry of a bat-style perching maneuver on structures: the manipulation of inertial dynamics

Abstract: The flight characteristics of bats remarkably have been overlooked in aerial drone designs. Unlike other animals, bats leverage the manipulation of inertial dynamics to exhibit aerial flip turns when they perch. Inspired by this unique maneuver, this work develops and uses a tiny robot called \textit{Harpoon} to demonstrate that the preparation for upside-down landing is possible through: 1) reorientation towards the landing surface through zero-angular-momentum turns and 2) reaching to the surface through shooting a detachable landing gear. The closed-loop manipulations of inertial dynamics takes place based on a symplectic description of the dynamical system (body and appendage), which is known to exhibit an excellent geometric conservation properties.