This bird-like robot has a claw that it could use to perch on branches it has flown to. It could potentially be useful for collecting samples in hard-to-reach places or silently observing animals in their natural habitat.
Landing and perching on a branch is easy for most birds, but it is very difficult for robots that fly like birds because of their larger size and the complexity of landing on a thin object.
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Now, at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne and his colleagues have developed a robotic bird 鈥� which has a 1.5-metre wingspan and weighs 700 grams 鈥� that can use a claw to grab onto a perch in the lab after a short flight.
鈥淚t鈥檚 extremely challenging to land something this big on a branch that is 6 centimetres in diameter,鈥� says Zufferey. 鈥淚t requires perfect timing, impact resistance, balancing, you need to be able to close [the claw] with enough strength, you need to detect the branch 鈥� it鈥檚 a lot of things you need to combine into one flight that lasts for seconds.鈥�
Zufferey and his team designed the claw to work like that of a real bird: it has pointy, talon-like tips and a softer part in the middle to help it grasp a branch. Once the bird has been guided to within a couple of metres of its target by an indoor motion-capture system, an onboard camera guides the centre of the claw to the prospective perch. When the soft part of the claw makes contact, a spring snaps it shut.
It requires a slightly different flight trajectory to the one real birds would use. They tend to hover for a few seconds before landing, but this flying robot just decreases its speed before perching.
It also uses an indoor GPS system to guide it to the 鈥渂ranch鈥� and a close-range camera to make adjustments just before landing.
The researchers hope the robot will be used in scenarios where loud quadcopter drones are unsuitable, such as in monitoring noise-sensitive animals in their habitats or collecting samples from hard-to-reach areas. To do that, they need to demonstrate it works in more unpredictable outdoor environments, says Zufferey.
The robot is a clever adaptation of how birds perch in nature and could be useful for inspecting wind turbines, says at the University of Bristol, UK. 鈥淪uch a robot could fly to the target installation, inspect it and then perch to recharge its batteries for a subsequent flight.鈥�
However, the robot would need to move beyond its indoor motion-capture system and use onboard sensors first, he says.
Nature Communications
