Engineers of the University of Sherbrooke created a drone that can land on any vertical and horizontal surface. This interesting feature the developers have borrowed from the birds that on the fly can sit on the cliffs or walls of houses using the smallest ledges and cracks to grab onto. Inspired by this natural example, scientists have created a working prototype drone, called S-MAD (Sherbrooke”s Multimodal Autonomous Drone).
The device is a small airplane that takes off and moves through the air at very high speed. This is not a quadcopter, so hang in place, he also can not. Cleaving through the air at speeds of 7-10 meters per second, the drone pinpoint front vertical wall with a laser sensor, calculates the distance, then flattens out parallel to the wall, slows down and clings to her with special claws-chassis, able to cling to any rough surface. After the surface adhesion has occurred, the engine is automatically switched off.
This feature may useful not only to the apparatus if necessary, could be sticking higher up in the sun and charge the batteries, but also for other important tasks. With this drone you can, for example, to organize the surveillance, because the shooting in flight is not always the best option, sometimes it’s better just to stick somewhere higher, and then calmly shoot.
When the drone would be ready to start moving, its engines will easily tear it from the wall to which it clung, after which the device will be able to continue its flight.
Drone’S-MAD can sit on a vertical surface
Vyacheslav Larionov