Resilient drones with morphing wings

Winged aerial robots and Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) commonly referred to as winged drones and drones, are increasingly used in a wide range of professional and non-professional applications today, spanning from civilian to military. As a result, they have to operate in diverse and challenging environments throughout their mission. However, these flying robots suffer from design limitations that reduce their operational envelope in such environments, increasing cost and restricting their mission advantage over other vehicles. Moreover, current winged drones' fixed geometry limits their operational versatility due to their inability to adjust to the requirements dictated by their diverse, complex, and often changing environments.

For example, strong and sustained wind currents can tip over or push off-course small-sized drones with exposed wings. Once tipped over, fixed-wing drones will be unable to continue their mission. In addition, when a mission might require ground operations, these winged drones may be prone to damage caused by contact between their exposed wings and electronics with ground objects.

Drones that are resilient to challenging conditions exist in the literature and on the market, although they are restricted to rotorcrafts with limited range and operational endurance. The purpose of this thesis is to develop the next generation of resilient, autonomous, winged aerial robots. The focus will be on addressing operational requirements that a wing drone might face during routine industrial missions, for example, inspection, monitoring, reconnaissance and search and rescue. Different methodologies and design strategies will be presented to allow next-generation winged drones to operate in these challenging conditions, including adverse wind currents and changes from open, wide to cluttered, confined, and unstructured environments.