This paper presents an aerially deployable crawler designed for adaptive locomotion and manipulation within tree canopies. The system combines compliant microspine-based tracks, a dual-track rotary gripper, and an elastic tail, enabling secure attachment and stable traversal across branches of varying curvature and inclination. Experiments demonstrate reliable gripping up to 90∘ body roll and inclination, while effective climbing on branches inclined up to 67.5∘, achieving a maximum speed of 0.55 body lengths per second on horizontal branches. The compliant tracks allow yaw steering of up to 10∘, enhancing maneuverability on irregular surfaces. Power measurements show efficient operation with a dimensionless cost of transport over an order of magnitude lower than typical hovering power consumption in aerial robots. The crawler provides a robust, low-power platform for environmental sampling and in-canopy sensing. The aerial deployment is demonstrated at a conceptual and feasibility level, while full drone-crawler integration is left as future work.
@article{arxiv.2512.07680,
title = {AMBER: A tether-deployable gripping crawler with compliant microspines for canopy manipulation},
author = {P. A. Wigner and L. Romanello and A. Hammad and P. H. Nguyen and T. Lan and S. F. Armanini and B. B. Kocer and M. Kovac},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2512.07680},
year = {2026}
}