When we think of drones, we imagine massive, quad-rotating cars humming like maniacal seagulls. What if your drowning was small enough to accidentally swallow?
That’s what MIT Assistant Professor Kevin Yufeng Chen built: a set of small drones with elastic actuators that power insect-like wings. The entire package weighs 665 mg or about “about the mass of a large bee,” according to Chen.
Chen created the drones with MIT PhD student Zhijian Ren, Harvard University PhD student Siyi Xu and Hong Kong University robotist Pakpong Chirarattananon. The goal is to use these small, soft drones to explore nearby spaces where rigid drones will break in contact with hard surfaces. It is also very agile.
The team calls the drones “soft-rigid hybrid”, a design that ensures that the drones can flap their wings 500 times per second, but can also survive various frictions and forces that could break a normal drone into bits.
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“You can hit him when he flies and he can recover,” Chen said. “He can also do aggressive maneuvers, such as suddenly jumping into the air.”
Chen expects the drones to be used in tight spaces, such as engines and machinery.
“Think about inspecting a turbine engine. You want a drone to move [an enclosed space] with a small room to check for cracks in the turbine plates, ”Chen said Daniel Ackerman at MIT.
The drones are currently square, but Chen intends to make them look more like dragonflies, further increasing the robot’s ick factor. Fortunately, there are no plans to unleash them on an unsuspecting audience any time soon.