CPS: Medium: Self-organizing battery-free and networked origami microfliers

This project develops a critical technological capability that does not currently exist — the ability to accurately deploy a large number of sensors to otherwise inaccessible locations from aerial platforms. Specifically, it creates fully functional, battery-free microfliers that communicate with each other to self-organize and coordinate their descent, enabling precise deployment of wireless sensor networks over large spatial scales. Such microfliers could be transformative for large-scale distribution and automated deployment of wireless sensors across applications like environmental monitoring, disease management, and other domains which require deploying sensors across large areas. This interdisciplinary project spans origami design, low-power actuation, power-harvesting, wireless networking, localization, and distributed control and computing to create networked battery-free microfliers that can in an energy-efficient manner actuate, communicate, and coordinate their in-air descent, achieving targeted, large-scale sensor deployment. This interdisciplinary research develops a series of enabling technologies towards the goal of creating a network of microfliers that can coordinate their deployment. This includes novel designs of the origami structures, sensors, actuators, and power harvesting that allow microfliers to change their shape and examine how these changes affect their flight dynamics. The research develops techniques for fine-grained control over the microfliers' fall behavior in mid-air, enabling a new capability for modulated descent that balances between power-intensive flight and passive falling. Additionally, the project develops novel methods that enable fliers to navigate in controlled directions and localize their 3D positions in a power-efficient manner. The research team develops battery-free distributed networking protocols that enable the microfliers to communicate with each other during flight. This effort explores various techniques, including battery-free network synchronization, location-aware frequency allocation and scheduling, height-area power adaptation algorithms, and methods that enable microfliers to communicate during descent across neighbors to self-organize and achieve targeted deployment. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.