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Bat Bot is an Autonomous Drone That Mimics a Bat's Flight

Bat Bot is an Autonomous Drone That Mimics a Bat's Flight | Biomimicry | Scoop.it

"Robotic birds and winged insects are relatively easy to create, but with over 40 joints in their wings, bats offer a new level of intricacy. Or, as Caltech professor and Jet Propulsion Laboratory researcher Soon-Jo Chung put it during a press conference, "bat flight is the holy grail of aerial robotics. [...] By simplifying that wing structure into just nine key joints covered by a flexible membrane, however, the team successfully created the first Bat Bot. Built from carbon fiber bones and 3D-printed socket joints, Bat Bot weighs just 93 grams and the silicon-based wing membrane is only 56 microns thick with a roughly one-foot wingspan."

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Swans Help Create Smoother Camera Drone Videos

Swans Help Create Smoother Camera Drone Videos | Biomimicry | Scoop.it

"The next time you see a graceful, dramatic video shot by a camera drone, you may have a swan to thank for the absence of any jittery footage. Stanford University researchers aredeveloping camera suspension technology inspired by whooping swans, whose heads remain remarkably still even when they're making aggressive in-flight maneuvers. Thanks to a blend of high-speed video and computer modeling, the scientists discovered that the swan's neck acts much like a vehicle's suspension, passively countering the effects of flapping wings or headwinds."

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Bee Model Could Be Breakthrough for Autonomous Drone Development

Bee Model Could Be Breakthrough for Autonomous Drone Development | Biomimicry | Scoop.it
Bees control their flight using the speed of motion (optic flow) of the visual world around them. A study by Scientists at the University of Sheffield Department of Computer Science suggests how motion-direction detecting circuits could be wired together to also detect motion-speed, which is crucial for controlling bees’ flight.

“Honeybees are excellent navigators and explorers, using vision extensively in these tasks, despite having a brain of only one million neurons,” said Alex Cope, PhD., lead researcher on the paper. “Understanding how bees avoid walls, and what information they can use to navigate, moves us closer to the development of efficient algorithms for navigation and routing, which would greatly enhance the performance of autonomous flying robotics,” he added.
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Rise Of The Insect Drones

Rise Of The Insect Drones | Biomimicry | Scoop.it
Nature spent millions of years perfecting flapping-wing flight. Now engineers can reproduce it with machines.
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