A new drone which takes its shape from the fluid undulations of a jellyfish has flown for the first time. It's a little odd to base the design of a flying robot on a slow-moving sea-dweller, but the results speak for themselves. And what's more, the drone's creator believes it's an improvement on current mini-drone designs.
That's because many mini-drones designed today are built to emulate the winged flight of a fruit fly. But if they want to stay aloft, fruit flies have to constantly make in-flight adjustments to compensate for air currents. Recreating a fly's active, quick-acting flight stabilizers in a robotic frame takes up space. When you're designing insect-sized drones, anything that takes up extra space and weight is a real buzzkill.
The jellyfish-based design thought up by NYU's Leif Ristroph actually eliminates the need for a complex, adaptive control system. As it turns out, a jellyfish "flies" in a much more stable manner than a fly does, eliminating the need for a bulky flight computer. The current prototype of the jellyfish drone is about the size of a soup bowl, but according to Ristroph, the simplicity of its design will allow it to be scaled down quite easily.
Eventually, the jellyfish drone could conceivably even be shrunk down to a single centemeter in width. At that size it could fly about unnoticed and squeeze through almost any opening. So if you're worried about being spied on, you might soon want to invest in a fly-swatter — actually, make that a jellyfish swatter. You can see the current prototype in flight here.
Via Newswise
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