A novel flying robot system driven by dielectric elastomer balloon actuators

Abstract

Soft unmanned flying objects have been developed to improve communication in areas where natural disasters occur. This article investigates the design, modeling, and control of an unmanned flying robot, different from classic flying robots which are based on electric motors, robots driven by soft actuators that have advantages of low noise, deformable property, and fast response. Untethered system based on dielectric elastomer actuators can be controlled to move, theory and experiments are presented to show the movement accompanied by large voltage-triggered deformation. We connect a dielectric elastomer balloon-shaped shell to an inelastic chamber which has larger volume and apply voltage to trigger one-layer or two-layer VHB membrane without causing electrical breakdown. The results show that buoyancy force in the air for helium balloon system is inversely proportional to the altitude when the flight system goes up. Compared with single-layer balloon shell, we also generalize the concept of multi-layer soft actuators that offer larger deformation. The larger the original volume of the untethered system is, the more mass can be controlled at the actuated state. Voltage-triggered controllable motion is appreciating with our designed structure.