Imperial College London
Alternate

ProfessorMirkoKovac

Faculty of Engineering, Department of Aeronautics

Professor in Aerial Robotics
 
 
 
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Contact

 

+44 (0)20 7594 5063m.kovac Website

 
 
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Location

 

326City and Guilds BuildingSouth Kensington Campus

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Summary

 

Publications

Citation

BibTex format

@inproceedings{Siddall:2017:10.1007/978-3-319-51532-8_1,
author = {Siddall, RJD and Kovac, M and Kennedy, G},
doi = {10.1007/978-3-319-51532-8_1},
publisher = {Springer},
title = {High power propulsion strategies for aquatic take-off in robotics},
url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-51532-8_1},
year = {2017}
}
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RIS format (EndNote, RefMan)

TY  - CPAPER
AB  - The ability to move between air and water with miniature robots would allow distributedwater sampling and monitoring of a variety of unstructured marine environments,such as coral reefs and coastal areas. To enable such applications, we are developing anew class of aerial-aquatic robots, called Aquatic Micro Aerial Vehicles (AquaMAVs),capable of diving into the water and returning to flight. One of the main challenges inthe development of an AquaMAV is the provision of sufficient power density for take-offfrom the water. In this paper, we present a novel system for powerful, repeatable aquaticescape using acetylene explosions in a 34 gram water jet thruster, which expels watercollected from its environment as propellant. We overcome the miniaturisation problemsof combustible fuel control and storage by generating acetylene gas from solid calciumcarbide, which is reacted with enviromental water. The produced gas is then combusted inair in a valveless combustion chamber to produce over 20N of thrust, sufficient to propelsmall robots into the air from water. The system for producing combustible gases fromsolid fuels is a very compact means of gas storage, and can be applied to other forms ofpneumatic actuation and inflatable structure deployment.
AU  - Siddall,RJD
AU  - Kovac,M
AU  - Kennedy,G
DO  - 10.1007/978-3-319-51532-8_1
PB  - Springer
PY  - 2017///
TI  - High power propulsion strategies for aquatic take-off in robotics
UR  - http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-51532-8_1
UR  - http://hdl.handle.net/10044/1/85676
ER  -
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