The jellyfish aircraft drone may not be made of the same materials as the sea creature, but it flies in a similar manner.
As previously reported by The Inquisitr , the United States has produced many types of drones, from restaurant waiters to pizza delivery to Amazon delivery drones . Even China is producing stealth drones for military purposes , although Colorado may shoot first before any war drone if a law passes .
Leif Ristroph and Stephen Childress of New York University’s Applied Math Lab explain where the inspiration for the jellyfish aircraft came from:
“We were interested first of all in making a robotic insect that would be an alternative to the helicopter. Our interest ended up being a little bit weird – it was the jellyfish.”
But they’re not designing the tiny 2.1 gram machine for the water, they’re wanting it to fly in the air. The goal for any drone design is to be as stable as possible. Many other designs have focused on using helicopter blades arranged in a quad or octocopter configuration, which is what the Amazon drone uses.
Other more exotic drone designs have tried mimicking insect wings, but this team thought a jellyfish aircraft might work out better. The prototype of the ornithopter they’ve built is capable of staying upright and recovering from disturbances by using a motion the real jellyfish use to navigate in the water. And the Biomimetics duo believes their idea has a bright future as the AeroJelly:
“In the future, small-scale flapping-wing aircraft may be used in applications ranging from surveillance and reconnaissance missions to traffic and air quality monitoring. Depending on the application, active control over an intrinsically unstable design may be more desirable than passive stability. In all cases, understanding the inherent flight dynamics is important for devising the control schemes needed for maneuvering and for keeping upright and on-course in the face of unexpected disturbances.”
What do you think about the jellyfish aircraft? Would you mind it whizzing around your neighborhood?
