Development and Integration of Adaptive Robotic Multi-Modal System (ARM²s)

Abstract

Animals are capable of performing agile and efficient flight, even in complex, clustered spaces such as forests. Even animals without regular wings often fly in these environments. Animals such as draco lizards and flying squirrels use physical adaptations of their limbs for controlled gliding and parachuting. Other animals, such as the flying snake (Chrysopelea paradisi), double the width of their body and form a concave bottom surface, in order to use their whole body as a ’wing’. These adaptations have allowed flying squirrels to glide for durations of 15 s and distances of 150 m and flying snakes to reduce their vertical acceleration to approximately 4ms during a non-equilibrium glide. 3