Thankfully, drones are not like hoverboards over here in the US – being deemed to be unsafe for use among consumers. Still, this does not mean that you can simply walk out any buy any drone without having to register with the FAA beforehand. Here we are with a rather unique drone that hails from the researchers over at the University of Southampton, where successful flight tests for a new kind of biologically inspired aircraft wing have taken place, having looked to the bat as its source of inspiration.
Specially meant for use in smaller sized drones that are known as micro air vehicles (MAVs), the design is a fundamentally different kind of wing template where UAVs are concerned. The Southampton team relied on a series of computational models in order to mimic the physiology of bats, and far from by flappy vinyl parts, they are electrically active polymer membranes which can function in the same manner as that of artificial muscles. The wings will be able to morph on their own, responding to changing flight conditions as you can see in the video above, as it relies on different levels of voltage in order to optimize aerodynamic characteristics as and when required.
Pretty cool, don’t you think so?
Filed in . Read more about Science.