Inspired by bats, researchers hope this robot may one day find victims in dangerous areas.
As we’ve discussed on Bits & Pieces, drones offer a number of advantages that would have otherwise been inconceivable in previous years, with one area in particular being search-and-rescue. Natural disasters and other emergencies call for timely distribution of medication and aid. Fortunately, unmanned aerial vehicles can make this more efficient. In an effort to prove just that, the robotics division of Switzerland-based National Centre of Competence in Research (NCCR) has recently developed DALER, a bio-inspired robot capable of both flying and walking.
DALER, short for Deployable Air-Land Exploration Robot, uses adaptive morphology inspired by the common “vampire bat,” meaning that the wings have been actuated using a foldable skeleton mechanism covered with a soft, flexible fabric, enabling it to be used both as wings and as legs, or whegs.
“In order to design the robot, the team had to first designate the primary mode of locomotion — in this case flight, as the DALER will cover the longest distances this way. With this in mind, a method of using the wings also for walking was devised in a way that does not give extra weight,” Ludovic Daler writes.
The robot is equipped with triangular, multi-use wingerons that rotate when it is on the ground to push the bio-inspired robot forward and maneuver through the air. This dual-mode locomotion gives DALER the ability to fly long distances to survey large spaces in a short timespan, and then to traverse the terrain in dangerous or inaccessible areas, such as a damaged building to locate victims.
According to the research team, future developments of the robot will include the possibility to hover and to take off autonomously from the ground in order to allow DALER to return to the air and come back to base after the mission. Interested in learning more? Head on over to its official page here.
