Tech Briefs Magazine - May 2023 - 32

Robotics & Automation
Robotic Wing Could Improve Drone Performance
The research could help increase the range of speed for delivery drones.
Lund University, Lund, Sweden
E
ven going as far back as bird-like dinosaurs,
ornithological animals have
always benefited from folding their
wings during upstroke. This makes
birds an interesting inspiration for the
development of drones. However, determining
which flapping strategy is
best requires aerodynamic studies. So, a
Swedish-Swiss research team has constructed
a robotic wing that can flap like
a bird.
" We have built a robot wing that can flap
more like a bird than previous robots, but
also flap in way that birds cannot do, " said
Christoffer Johansson, Lund University.
" By measuring the performance of the
wing in our wind tunnel, we have studied
how different ways of achieving the wing
upstroke affect force and energy in flight. "
Prior research has shown that birds flap
their wings more horizontally when flying
slowly. This new study shows that birds
most likely do it - despite it requiring
more energy - because it's easier to create
a sufficiently large force to stay aloft
and propel themselves. Drones can emulate
this to increase their range of speeds.
" The new robotic wing can be used to
answer questions about bird flight that
would be impossible simply by observing
flying birds, " explained Johansson. " Research
into the flight ability of living
birds is limited to the flapping movement
that the bird actually uses. "
The research explains why birds flap
the way they do, via finding out which
movement patterns create the most force
and are the most efficient. The results can
also be used to better understand how the
migration of birds is affected by climate
change and access to food, as well as many
potential uses for drones.
Christoffer Johansson with the robotic wing. (Image: Anders Örtegren)
" Flapping drones could be used for
deliveries, but they would need to be efficient
enough and able to lift the extra
weight this entails, " said Johansson.
" How the wings move is of great importance
for performance, so this is where
our research could come in handy. "
For more information, contact Christoffer
Johansson at christoffer.johansson@
biol.lu.se.
Rapidly Configuring Robots for Lunar Exploration
Mix-and-match kit could enable astronauts to build a menagerie of lunar exploration bots.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA
W
hen astronauts begin to build a permanent
base on the Moon, as NASA
plans to do in the coming years, they'll
need help. Robots could potentially do the
heavy lifting by laying cables, deploying solar
panels, erecting communications towers,
and building habitats. But if each robot
is designed for a specific action or task,
a Moon base could become overrun by a
zoo of machines, each with its own unique
parts and protocols.
To avoid a bottleneck of bots, a team of
MIT engineers is designing a kit of universal
robotic parts that an astronaut could
32
easily mix and match to rapidly configure
different robot " species " to fit various lunar
missions. Once a mission is completed,
a robot can be disassembled and its parts
used to configure a new robot to meet a
different task.
The team calls the system WORMS, for
the Walking Oligomeric Robotic Mobility
System. The system's parts include worm-inspired
robotic limbs that an astronaut can
easily snap onto a base, and that work together
as a walking robot. Depending on
the mission, parts can be configured to
build, for instance, large " pack " bots capawww.techbriefs.com
ble
of carrying heavy solar panels up a hill.
The same parts could be reconfigured into
six-legged spider bots that can be lowered
into a lava tube to drill for frozen water.
" You could imagine a shed on the
Moon with shelves of worms, " said team
leader George Lordos, a PhD candidate
and Graduate Instructor in MIT's Department
of Aeronautics and Astronautics
in reference to the independent, articulated
robots that carry their own
motors, sensors, computer, and battery.
" Astronauts could go into the shed, pick
the worms they need, along with the
Tech Briefs, May 2023
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