When we think of drones, we imagine huge, quad-rotor machines buzzing around like manic seagulls. But what if your drowning was small enough to accidentally swallow?
That’s what MIT assistant professor Kevin Yufeng Chen built: a set of tiny drones with elastic actuators that power insect-like wings. The entire package weighs 665 mg, or about the “mass of a large bumblebee,” Chen said.
Chen created the drones together with MIT PhD student Zhijian Ren, Harvard University PhD student Siyi Xu, and City University of Hong Kong roboticist Pakpong Chirarattananon. The goal is to use these small, soft drones to explore tight spaces where rigid drones break on contact with hard surfaces. It is also very manoeuvrable.
The team calls the drones ‘hybrid soft-rigid’, a design that allows the drones to flap their wings 500 times per second, but also survive the various frictions and forces that could break a normal drone to pieces.
G / O Media can receive a commission
“You can hit him when he’s flying, and he can recover,” Chen said. “It can also perform aggressive maneuvers, such as somersaults in the air.”
Chen expects the drones to be used in tight spaces such as engines and machines.
“Think of the inspection of a turbine engine. You wish a drone would move [an enclosed space] with a small camera to see if there are any cracks in the turbine plates, ”Chen said Daniel Ackerman from MIT
The drones are currently square, but Chen plans to make them look more like dragonflies, adding to the robot’s ick factor even more. Fortunately, there are no plans to launch these to an unsuspecting audience anytime soon.