The Picobug : a mesoscale robot that can run, fly, and grasp

In this paper we present the flying monkey, a novel robot platform having three main capabilities: walking, grasping, and flight. This new robotic platform merges one of the world’s smallest quadrotor aircraft with a lightweight, single-degree-of-freedom walking mechanism and an SMA-actuated gripper to enable all three functions in a 30g package. The main goal and key contribution of this paper is to design and prototype the flying monkey that has increased mission life and capabilities through the combinat