Inflatable drone can bounce off walls and perch on nearly anything

An inflatable drone can perch on many different objects by colliding with them – taking advantage of its soft-body floppiness to increase the time spent in contact with the landing target and to avoid bouncing off.

This approach loosely mimics the physics of how birds land on branches and other objects. Although the drone itself resembles a traditional quadcopter with four arms and rotors, its fully inflatable body can be adjusted to have either a stiff or soft airframe based on the amount of …