Adaptive Morphology: New Multi-Modal Drone Can Use its Wings to Walk

Adaptive Morphology: New Multi-Modal Drone Can Use its Wings to Walk

Most animals are multi-modal: they can walk and swim, or walk and fly… there are clear advantages to being able to do move multi-modally, with capability and efficiency coming out near the top of the list.

The disadvantage is that generally, you need a substantial amount of extra hardware for each mode of locomotion… EPFL has managed to create a UAV that can use its wings to walk.

This robot takes advantage of “adaptive morphology," where you’ve got one structure (the wings, in this case) that can be used for multiple locomotion modes.

In a search and rescue situation, you might use a capability like this to fly around and get a good overview of an area, and then land and crawl around under some bushes if you spot something interesting.

[S]mall UAVs tend to land badly [so] being able to move around (even just a little bit) vastly improves the potential for returning to the air successfully.

It’s probably not possible to design wings that have much structural commonality with particularly efficient legs, but that’s not a problem when you can just invent some wings that change their shape, which looks to be where this research is going next.