Quadcopters today it is precious. They take off and fly, take pictures or anything, and then land, repeat — and blah. If these drones were birds, they would be animals. But the Stereotyped Nature-Inspired Aerial Grasper, or SNAG, could be their biggest enemy. The new Quadcopter has legs, each loaded with four 3D printing presses that closes anything to fit, whether it is a branch to rest or maybe, one day, some drones are flying in the wrong direction. That’s right, it’s a drone that can search for drones.
For many years, quadcopters have known the atmosphere, but not just the surface: The drone can tilt and rotate its rotors at different distances. Birds, on the other hand, are able to wrap their feet around everything, to match their fingerprints and talons, which they purchase at the expense of branches. “Everything is accessible to birds,” said David Lentink, a biologist and roboticist at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands, “said David Lentink, a biologist and roboticist at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. paper describing a robot in a magazine Robotic Science. “For us, this is very encouraging: The whole idea is that if you could just make a variety of weapons, you could be anywhere.”
SNAG was inspired primarily by the peregrine falcon, a beast among enemies. This raptor blows-bombs quickly until 200 miles per hour, hitting other birds in the air and immersing its prey in their body. It is the fastest running animal on earth and the most dangerous being in the sky.
At 1.5 pounds, the SNAG is actually about the size of one, though it has no wings and many rotors. When one of the SNAG legs touches a branch, it begins to collapse, twisting and twisting. This effect causes the tendon of the leg to lengthen, pulling the wires under each toe. The lower the leg, the more tension accumulates in the tendon, to the point that it causes a spring to pull the nerves harder to pull, increasing the grip strength. Both fingernails and fingerprints, made of flexible rubber wrapped with duct tape, enable SNAG to hold tight.
Basically, the robot’s legs have converted the force exerted by the branch into a working force in 50 milliseconds. “The robot has it power—It’s not like landing a helicopter, ”says Lentink. “It’s a powerful landing, a controlled hit.” When landing, the accelerometer on the right foot of the SNAG monitors the robot’s position, and motors adjust the shape as needed. To release the handle, another engine reduces tendon tension. Because there is elastic at the top of the fingers, the numbers return to the open position as soon as they are released, allowing SNAG to fly.
In the video, you can see the robot’s legs working toward the “animal,” just as a cabbage can destroy some birds from the sky. When objects interact with the feet, its force converts into force that the robot uses to press its claws.
And here I go in a slow walk. The SNAG relies on its splendor to fly, just as the hummingbird relies on the speed of its wings for flight. (A real peregrine fox can blow and push with his strong legs to get off the ground.)
One of the drawbacks of SNAG is that it does not self-regulate. To do so, the pilot had to steer the vessel from a distance. But Lentink and his colleagues are working to make the robot available to the branch, calculating its proximity, and landing on its own.
SNAG is not the first quadcopter with legs. LEG of Caltech ON Aerial Robotic DrOne (aka Leonardo), which launched in 2019, has ground-breaking legs; was made to better explore Mars. Both SNAG and Leonardo are pursuing the same thing, though: using force. Replacing the drone hover instead of monitoring the area quickly removes the battery. (NASA has already done so sent a helicopter to Mars, but it has no legs, so its flight time is very short.)