Development of an Arm with Safety Harness Function to Hold and Release Lifeline for Multi-Rotor Drones

The purpose of this study is to develop an arm to physically prevent multi-rotor crashes. The developed arm serves as a safety harness, and the multi-rotor equipped with the arm is intended to be used for inspection tasks of structures such as bridges. The drone flies while holding the lifelines installed on the structure using the arm and conducts inspection work during that time. In previous study, the arm installed on the quad-rotor with a safety harness had a ring-shaped tip that could not be opened and closed. Therefore, in this study, we developed an openable arm that can hold and release the lifeline at any desired timing. The created arm can hold objects simply by pressing the arm against the target to be restrained. Furthermore, by opening the arm's tip, it is possible to release the restrained object. Experimental results confirmed that when mounted on the multi-rotor, the arm can hold and release objects during flight.