Shock Absorbing Drone Feet

Project Outline

Quick side project to investigate if we could come up with a way to help dampen hard on an autonomous drone. We had been running into issues where the drone would land hard and through off the onboard sensors sometimes sending the drone back into the air.

Original Design

The original design was intended to be used in conjunction with our landing and charging enclosure. The wire you see is use on two separate legs to bring power from the enclosure to a charging circuit and then to the vehicle battery.

Prototyping

Rapid prototyping using our office 3D printer and TPU filament allowed us to quickly try an idea and move on if it shown no signs of improvement. The picture shows various versions from original to end result.

Conclusion

The end result was a half circle shape added to the bottom of the original design. This allow us to quickly adapt to our current vehicle without much rework. The 3D printer has a hard time working with such small part using TPU (flexible filament). Adding the half circle ended up helping with landing hop.