This Christmas the strong winds decorated the trees with shiny new drones:
(photo by Rod Croskery)
Drones of the future are going to get a lot more maneuverable.
A group at Imperial College London has now built an aquatic diving drone with wings that can tuck in for protection during rapid plunges, inspired by the hunting behaviour of seabirds in the family Sulidae (gannets and boobies).
And a Swiss team has developed a drone with feather-like elements that allow the wing to fold into a range of configurations, analogous to the way birds can overlap their wing feathers. This allows the drone’s wings to be adjusted to suit the conditions – reducing wing area in strong winds, for example.
These advances should make it possible for drones to maneuver in a greater range of tough-to-access environments, just like birds.
Both studies are published in a new issue of Royal Society Interface Focus:
Siddall et al. Wind and water tunnel testing of a morphing aquatic micro air vehicle.
From December 26, 2016