Drones or unmanned aerial vehicles are getting more and more popular as the related technology is advancing. A new drone with a distinguishing feature of ground mobility has been developed recently.
The DALER abbreviated for ‘Deployable Air-Land Exploration Robot’ is developed by the Swiss research institute EPFL. The functioning parts of DALER Drone are very intelligently inspires from that of a common vampire bat. It has foldable wings which allow it to make a flight at about 20 m/sec. It can be retracted to walk on the ground at a reduced speed of 6 cm/sec.
“The robot’s design is inspired by the common vampire bat Desmodus rotundus, which can perform aerial and terrestrial locomotion with limited trade-offs,” wrote Ludovic Daler from the Laboratory of Intelligent Systems at Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland, and colleagues, who described the drone DALER in a study published in the journal Bioinspiration and Biomimetics on Jan. 19.
“Wings’ adaptive morphology allows the robot to modify the shape of its body in order to increase its efficiency during terrestrial locomotion.”
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The walking-cum-flying DALER Drone can come up to be very useful in areas inaccessible to humans according to Discovery. Such drones can be used during rescue operations to investigate unapproachable sites. Drone is expected to be of great help during natural disasters in locating victims. This could save time of the rescue teams.
“The other appeal of ground mobility is that it gives a winged robot the capability to land, reorient itself, and then take off again,” says Evan Ackerman from IEEE Spectrum.
Research in going on towards modifications and improvements in designing and use of DALER Drone. It is being tried to make it autonomous so that it could return back after completion of task.
This video shows how different parts of the DALER Drone work and also how it effortlessly gets modified for walking.
Comment down your views and suggestions regarding future applications of DALER drone.
