Bumper Drone: Elastic Morphology Design for Aerial Physical Interaction

• URL: http://arxiv.org/abs/2602.18976v1
• Date: Sat, 21 Feb 2026 22:44:40 GMT
• Title: Bumper Drone: Elastic Morphology Design for Aerial Physical Interaction
• Abstract summary: We present a drone platform with elastic horns that enables touch-and-go manoeuvres.<n>We show that the elastic horn can absorb impact energy while maintaining vehicle stability.<n>In addition to intermittent contact, the platform equipped with elastic horns also demonstrates stable, sustained contact with static objects.
• Score: 6.865889671553905
• License: http://arxiv.org/licenses/nonexclusive-distrib/1.0/
• Abstract: Aerial robots are evolving from avoiding obstacles to exploiting the environmental contact interactions for navigation, exploration and manipulation. A key challenge in such aerial physical interactions lies in handling uncertain contact forces on unknown targets, which typically demand accurate sensing and active control. We present a drone platform with elastic horns that enables touch-and-go manoeuvres - a self-regulated, consecutive bumping motion that allows the drone to maintain proximity to a wall without relying on active obstacle avoidance. It leverages environmental interaction as a form of embodied control, where low-level stabilisation and near-obstacle navigation emerge from the passive dynamic responses of the drone-obstacle system that resembles a mass-spring-damper system. Experiments show that the elastic horn can absorb impact energy while maintaining vehicle stability, reducing pitch oscillations by 38% compared to the rigid horn configuration. The lower horn arrangement was found to reduce pitch oscillations by approximately 54%. In addition to intermittent contact, the platform equipped with elastic horns also demonstrates stable, sustained contact with static objects, relying on a standard attitude PID controller.

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