Development of multi-tentacle micro air vehicle

We introduce a developmental stage of multi-tentacle MAV (micro air vehicle) platform. It is based on a four rotary wing aerial platform such as a quadrotor system and three of 4 DOF (degree of freedom) tentacles attached at the bottom of it. Unlikely mobile manipulating research which focuses more on the stability and control of manipulators and floating platform, a multi-tentacle system presented in this paper is intended to suggest a new paradigm of small scaled aerial robotics research and to show the proof of concept of them by experiment. Newly integrated and developed multi-tentacle aerial vehicle can have extended locomotions compared currently existing flying-only vehicles such as vertically and upside down perching capability, inclined or rough surface landing capability, and object pickup and release. Furthermore, control of a particular motion of tentacles adds propulsive force for taking off as birds or flying animals do.