Many attempts have been made to embed softness into multirotor-robot design to enhance morphing and physical interactions. However, soft parts were mostly confined to specific locations and customized to specific tasks. While interesting ideas towards fully soft multirotor robots have started to emerge [1-3], substantial work on soft aerial robot design is still required to unlock the full potential of softness and achieve rich physical interaction capabilities.
This assignment designs, builds, and tests a hexarotor UAV with deformable arms hosting one propeller each and additionally actuated by a single tendon. The tendon actuation changes the arm shapes, allowing a transition between underactuation and full actuation through whole-body morphing. Compared to a rigid counterpart with tiltable propellers [4], the prototype has the potential to adapt to the environment, e.g., land on pipes or grasp objects, or pass through narrow spaces thanks to the body deformation.
The arm design can take inspiration from the literature, considering 3D-printed arms [1,2] or composite-material arms [3].
The main research question is:
Can a single-tendon deformable-arm UAV fly and, thnks to the body deformations, morph and transition between under-actuated and fully-actuated flight modes?
Required Skills
The interested candidate should have skills in mechanical design, UAV modeling and control, and possibly prototype realization, and should be motivated to carry out hands-on activities
How to apply
Interested candidates are invited to contact Chiara Gabellieri at c.gabellieri@utwente.nl, expressing their interest and providing their CV and list of exams.
Timeline Constraints
The assignment is available to be started full-time no later than October 1, 2026, or after June 1, 2027.
References
[1] [Ruiz, F., Arrue, B., & Ollero, A. (2022, June). A flexible propelled arm: Mechanical considerations for the use in UAVs. In 2022 International Conference on Unmanned Aircraft Systems (ICUAS) (pp. 1047-1055). IEEE.
[2] Ruiz, F., Arrue, B. C., & Ollero, A. (2022). Sophie: Soft and flexible aerial vehicle for physical interaction with the environment. IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters, 7(4), 11086-11093.
[3] Verdin, R., Moreno, H., Spong, M. W., & Flores, G. (2026). The QuadSoft: Design, Construction, and Experimental Validation of a Soft and Actuated Quadrotor. arXiv preprint arXiv:2604.00496.
[4] Ryll, M., Bicego, D., & Franchi, A. (2016, October). Modeling and control of FAST-Hex: A fully-actuated by synchronized-tilting hexarotor. In 2016 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS) (pp. 1689-1694). IEEE.