SLAP: Slapband-based Autonomous Perching Drone with Failure Recovery for Vertical Tree Trunks

2026-01-01

arXiv.org

AI Summary

This work proposes a gentle trunk-perching solution for mid-sized drones that overcomes the limitations of existing vertical-surface perching methods, which often rely on high-impact landings and lack system-level integration or failure-recovery mechanisms. The proposed system integrates visual perching-site detection, IMU-failure awareness, close-range optical ranging, soft-landing attitude control, and a novel slapband-driven compliant microspine gripper. By uniquely combining a slapband structure with microspines, the gripper enables low-impact, contact-based adhesion. Furthermore, the system incorporates a complete perching-failure detection and active recovery mechanism. Validated on a 1.2 kg commercial quadrotor, the approach achieves a 75% success rate (15 out of 20 trials) in indoor perching on oak tree trunks and demonstrates 100% recovery in two human-induced failure cases.

Technology Category

• Intelligent Robots: Multimodal Perception & Sensor Fusion
• Computer Vision: Motion & Tracking
• Multiagent Systems: Distributed Problem Solving

Application Category

• Search and Retrieval-Augmented AI: Vertical and domain-specific search
• Responsible Web: Machine-in-the-loop, human agency and autonomy
• Systems and Infrastructure for Web, Mobile and WoT: Web performance, measurement, and characterization

Abstract

Perching allows unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to reduce energy consumption, remain anchored for surface sampling operations, or stably survey their surroundings. Previous efforts for perching on vertical surfaces have predominantly focused on lightweight mechanical design solutions with relatively scant system-level integration. Furthermore, perching strategies for vertical surfaces commonly require high-speed, aggressive landing operations that are dangerous for a surveyor drone with sensitive electronics onboard. This work presents the preliminary investigation of a perching approach suitable for larger drones that both gently perches on vertical tree trunks and reacts and recovers from perch failures. The system in this work, called SLAP, consists of vision-based perch site detector, an IMU (inertial-measurement-unit)-based perch failure detector, an attitude controller for soft perching, an optical close-range detection system, and a fast active elastic gripper with microspines made from commercially-available slapbands. We validated this approach on a modified 1.2 kg commercial quadrotor with component and system analysis. Initial human-in-the-loop autonomous indoor flight experiments achieved a 75% perch success rate on a real oak tree segment across 20 flights, and 100% perch failure recovery across 2 flights with induced failures.

Problem

• autonomous perching
• vertical surfaces
• failure recovery
• UAV
• tree trunks

Innovation

• autonomous perching
• failure recovery
• slapband gripper
• vertical tree trunk
• system-level integration