A perching mechanism for micro aerial vehicles

Abstract Micro Aerial Vehicles (MAVs) with perching capabilities can be used to efficiently place sensors in aloft locations. A major challenge for perching is to build a lightweight mechanism that can be easily mounted on a MAV, allowing it to perch (attach and detach on command) to walls of different materials. To date, only very few systems have been proposed that aim at enabling MAVs with perching capabilities. Typically, these solutions either require a delicate dy-namic flight maneuver in front of the wall or expose the MAV to very high impact forces when colliding Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s12213-010-0026-1) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users