When we think of drones, we imagine huge quadcopter machines that buzz like manic seagulls. But what if your drowning was small enough to be swallowed accidentally?
This is what MIT assistant professor Kevin Yufeng Chen has built: a set of tiny drones with elastic actuators that move insect-like wings. The entire package weighs 665 mg, or about “roughly the mass of a large bee,” according to Chen.
Chen created the drones alongside MIT doctoral student Zhijian Ren, Harvard University doctoral student Siyi Xu and roboticist Pakpong Chirarattananon at City University of Hong Kong. The goal is to use these tiny smooth drones to explore nearby spaces where rigid drones will break when they come into contact with hard surfaces. It is also very agile.
The team calls the drones “soft-rigid hybrids,” a design that ensures that the drones can flap their wings 500 times a second, but can also survive various friction and forces that could break a normal drone into pieces.
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“You can hit him when he is flying and he can recover,” said Chen. “He can also do aggressive maneuvers, like somersaults in the air.”
Chen expects drones to be used in tight spaces, such as engines and machines.
“Think about inspecting a turbine engine. Would you like a drone to move [an enclosed space] with a small camera to check for cracks in the turbine plates, ”said Chen. Daniel Ackerman of MIT.
Drones are currently square, but Chen intends to make them more like dragonflies, further increasing the robot’s ick factor. Fortunately, there are no plans to release this to an unsuspecting audience anytime soon.