Bio‐Inspired Large‐Area Soft Sensing Skins to Measure UAV Wing Deformation in Flight

• Published in: Advanced functional materials Vol. 31; no. 23
• Main Authors: Shin, Hee‐Sup, Ott, Zachary, Beuken, Leopold G., Ranganathan, Badri N., Humbert, J. Sean, Bergbreiter, Sarah
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Hoboken Wiley Subscription Services, Inc 01.06.2021
• Subjects: Aerodynamics; biomimetics; Disturbances; Dynamic loads; Dynamic tests; electronic skins; Materials science; Molding (process); Robotics; Robust control; soft robotics; soft sensors; Unmanned aerial vehicles
• ISSN: 1616-301X; 1616-3028
• DOI: 10.1002/adfm.202100679

Biological organisms demonstrate remarkable agility in complex environments, especially in comparison to engineered robotic systems. In part, this is due to an organism's ability to detect disturbances and react to them quickly. To address the challenge of quickly sensing these same disturbances in robotic systems, this study proposes and demonstrates large‐area soft sensing skins designed to sense disturbances on unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in flight. These skins are enabled by high‐resolution soft strain sensors embedded into a large‐area skin through a modular molding process that spans feature sizes from tens of microns to 0.675 m. The electronics of the sensing system enable the soft skins to be sampled fast enough to capture dynamic loads on a wing. Overall, the large‐area soft sensing skin demonstrates high sensitivity, mechanical robustness, and consistent sensor readings across static and dynamic tests. The use of the soft sensing skin during UAV flight demonstrates that the sensing skin can capture relevant flight dynamics on small UAVs. These results pave the way to large‐area soft sensing skins for fast and robust control of a wide variety of robotic systems. A large‐area soft sensing skin, inspired by hawkmoth wings, combines 14 soft capacitive strain sensors with microscale features across a skin length of 0.675 m. The skin is integrated with a flexible electronics interface and used to measure wing deformation on a UAV during flight, thereby illustrating the benefits of a robust sensing skin with a large number of sensors.