DASH Robot: Minimalistic Design and Optimal Aerial-Terrestrial Locomotion via Contact-Implicit Control
Researchers present DASH, a novel aerial-terrestrial robot with a minimalistic design that integrates a ducted fan coaxial body and a springy leg. A contact-implicit model predictive controller enables automatic switching between flight and hopping modes for optimal energy efficiency, validated through tasks including periodic hopping, aerial flight, and autonomous mode transitions.
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[Submitted on 20 Jul 2026]
Title:DASH Robot: Minimalistic Design and Optimal Aerial-Terrestrial Locomotion via Contact-Implicit Control
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Abstract:We present a novel and minimalistic design of an aerial-terrestrial robot DASH: Ducted Aerial Spring Hopper. The goal is to enable both aerial and ground locomotion capabilities on a unified mobile robot that is mechanically-minimalistic, locomotion-versatile, and energy-efficient. We propose an organic integration of ducted fan co-axial body with a springy leg at the bottom for realization. The ducted fan module provides thrust-vectoring as the main actuation for agile flying; when it is combined with the light-weight spring leg, the robot realizes highly efficient ground hopping with energy circulation. Moreover, to realize optimal locomotion with two modes, we employ a contact-implicit model predictive controller to automatically choose locomotion modes and actuation. We successfully validated the design and control of DASH through a range of tasks, including periodic hopping, aerial flight, and mode-free locomotion with autonomous mode transitions during obstacle traversal.
Comments: IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS) 2026
Subjects:
Robotics (cs.RO)
Cite as: arXiv:2607.18527 [cs.RO]
(or arXiv:2607.18527v1 [cs.RO] for this version)
https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2607.18527
arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite (pending registration)
Submission history
From: Jiarong Kang [view email] [v1] Mon, 20 Jul 2026 21:39:25 UTC (4,693 KB)
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