Drones Archives - Mecharithm

03 Aug 2022

A Robotic Bird That Actually Flies

This is a robotic bird that actually flies with foldable wings with flapping capabilities. GRIFFIN ERC Advanced Grant project. A robotic bird flying. Courtesy of the University of Seville. A team of researchers from the University of Seville in Spain created robotic birds that can perform a variety of tasks like typical drones and many more. A robotic bird's flying time is double that of a standard drone's, which is about 20-30 minutes, and its flapping wings assist in conserving battery life. On the other hand, they do not have rotors, which significantly reduce noise. These robots have onboard perception…

08 Feb 2022

Mid-air Reconfigurable Quadcopter

Drones, Robot Categories 👉🏻

The High Performance Robotics Lab at the UC Berkley, funded by the Berkeley Fellowship for Graduate Study, and the NSF GRFP, developed a quadcopter that can change its shape mid-flight, operate in four configurations, and has the ability to continue hovering in three of the configurations. Image credit: The High Performance Robotics Lab at the UC Berkley This research can have potential applications in construction, search and rescue missions, and inspections in dangerous environments. Watch a short video of this below: More information:https://arxiv.org/pdf/2103.16632.pdfhttps://hiperlab.berkeley.edu/ If you enjoyed this post, please consider contributing to help us with our mission to make robotics…

14 Jan 2022

Flying Microrobots for Pollination, Rescue, and Navigating Machinery

Drones, Robot Categories 👉🏻

Flying microrobots are diminutive drones developed by a group of researchers from MIT, Harvard, and the City University of Hong Kong. Image credit: MIT These microrobots are powered by soft actuators made of thin rubber cylinders coated in a carbon nanotube, producing an electrostatic force that squeezes and elongates the rubber cylinder when voltage is being applied. They recently proposed a new fabrication technique by removing air bubbles to produce low-voltage, power-dense artificial muscles that can improve the actuation of these microrobots. Image credit: MIT A swarm of these robots can have possible applications to pollinate a field of crops,…

13 Jan 2022

Drone Badminton to Improve Physical and Mental Health of the People with Low Vision

Drones, Robot Categories 👉🏻

Digital Nature Group at the University of Tsukuba in Japan developed "Drone Badminton" that enables people with low vision to play badminton. The drone acts as the "ball," and when passing through a ring frame, the sensor at the frame detects this, and the drone's direction changes back to the opponent. Image credit: Digital Nature Group at the University of Tsukuba This project helps people with low vision regain their mental and physical well-being who otherwise are unable to see the size of the ball and could not react to the speed of the ball in the regular badminton game.…

13 Dec 2021

COVID-19 Vaccine Delivery Using Cargo Drones by Madagascar Flying Labs in Collab with WeRobotics

Drones, Robot Categories 👉🏻

Robotics has shown to be vital during the time of COVID-19 and now with the vaccines available, it continues to serve the population. Madagascar Flying Labs in collaboration with WeRobotics have recently used cargo drones and delivered 250 doses of the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine to very remote parts of northern Madagascar for the first time. Image credit: Madagascar Flying Labs and WeRobotics Watch a short video of this below: More information: https://werobotics.org/healthrobotics/Twilio.org If you enjoyed this post, please consider contributing to help us with our mission to make robotics and mechatronics available for everyone. We deeply thank you…

29 Nov 2021

A Protective System for Winged Drones Inspired by Beetles

Drones, Robot Categories 👉🏻

Laboratory of Intelligent Systems (LIS) at EPFL, directed by Prof. Dario Floreano, proposed a protective system for winged drones inspired by beetles to help these aerial vehicles protect their delicate structures. Image Credit: Laboratory of Intelligent Systems (LIS) This protective system consists of an added set of retractable wings like the ones found in beetles to encase the main folding wings when protection is required. Watch the robot in action in the following video: Read the full paper here:https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9591382 More information:https://www.epfl.ch/labs/lis/ If you enjoyed this post, please consider contributing to help us with our mission to make robotics and mechatronics…

29 Nov 2021

A Bi-Rotor Drone from Cleo Robotics for Challenging Environments

Drones, Robot Categories 👉🏻

Dronut® X1 from the Boston-based startup Cleo Robotics is a bi-rotor drone designed especially for environments where GPS fails to work. Image Credit: Cleo Robotics The main application of this drone is operating in difficult environments where the existing drones have challenges to operate in. Key features: bi-rotor instead of four!high maneuverabilitycan live stream high-definition videocan collect LiDAR data in ultra confined spaces and challenging environmentscan fly safely near people and around sensitive equipmentlittle to no training is needed due to its autonomy suiteit can operate at the max speed of 4 m/s12 mins of flight time40 mins of battery timeSensors…

05 Nov 2020

Implementing Dynamics and Control of a Quadrotor in MATLAB

Drones, Robot Categories 👉🏻

In this post, we will implement the dynamics and control of a quadrotor in MATLAB and Simulink. Stabilizing and tracking controllers are simulated and implemented on Quadcopter. A square trajectory is specified for the tracking controller. The reference of the simulation equations is the paper "Modeling and control of quadcopter" by Teppo Luukkonen. You can download the paper HERE! It has a table of values that we will use for the simulation. Objective: Simulation of Dynamics and Control of a Quadrotor in MATLAB and Simulink The objective is to implement a simulation of the quadcopter dynamics by implementing the equations…