Didn't think drones or bats could get creepier? Researchers at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign just combined the two.
Yes, they have created a robot bat drone, and last week they released a video of their (very realistic looking) prototype flying around their lab.
The RoboBat-- real name-- was created through a $1.5 million National
Science Foundation grant given to four engineering professors at UIUC
in 2014 to create a drone inspired by biology in order to create more
efficient autonomous aerial vehicles. Now they have created that
autonomous robot bat and are testing its flight in their labs.
But why bats? Essentially they are more power efficient and safer than quadcopters.
“When a bat flaps its wings, it’s like a rubber sheet,” said UIUC
Coordinated Science Laboratory professor Seth Hutchinson told
Engineering at IL last year.
“It fills up with air and deforms. And then when the wing gets to the
end of its motion, that rubber wing pushes the air out when it springs
back into place. So you get this big amplification of power that comes
just from the fact you are using flexible membranes inside the wing
itself.”
“We think we can build a dynamic structure that takes advantage of
the flapping wing flight in a clever way to make it low-power,” he added
at the time. “Also, you can imagine bats locking their wings and
gliding. In principle, you can put one up in the air and have it circle
around for a long time without spending much power at all. A quad rotor
always has to be burning energy to stay in the air.”
In
addition, in case the device collided with a human (or another living
thing) flapping wings are a bit safer than rotating blades.
The initial intent for the RoboBat was to get a better view of
construction sites in progress, but researchers said there are many
possibilities for the tech. Meaning, yes, it could be used to deliver
packages.
“We think we can bring many benefits to robotics by using this
biologically inspired architecture,” Hutchinson said. “We mean to make a
robot that can have the same advantages in terms of performance,
agility, and lifetime of flight as the biological thing.”
0 komentar:
Post a Comment