Suppose you wanted a drone that could hover in place like a quadcopter, but that didn't go through batteries nearly as quickly. If you did, you might like Floaty, a "flying robot" that uses moveable wings to ride updrafts.
Inspired by updraft-riding birds of prey such as the kestrel, Floaty was designed by a team of scientists at Germany's Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems and the University of Stuttgart. And just to be clear, it does not become (or remain) airborne by flapping its four wing flaps.
Instead, after being manually placed in an updraft, it automatically adjusts those flaps in order to control how the air flows around it. Doing so allows Floaty to change its air resistance, which in turn stabilizes the robot and lets it move both vertically and horizontally within the air column. It can even hold itself in place when pushed from the side by wind gusts.
An early flat version of Floaty did have a problem with getting flipped over by such disturbances during vertical wind tunnel tests. This problem was addressed by giving the device a lower center of gravity, and adding a bend to its previously rigid wing flaps. It now remains stable even in wind tunnel air speeds of up to 10 meters (33 ft) per second.
Of course, one does have to wonder where the robot might actually be used. After all, you couldn't just throw it up in the air and hope for the best.
"Floaty could inspect factory smokestacks where there is strong upward airflow. It could potentially work there with little modification," says Prof. Michael Mühlebach from the Max Planck Institute. "Similar technology could perhaps also help control rockets during re-entry, or it could help guide weather balloons. There are many ways in which the robot can take advantage of upward airflows to save energy."
A paper on the research has been published in the journal npj Robotics.
