Taking from search and rescue to inspections, security, surveillance, science and research, aerial photography, aerial video, surveying/GIS, animals’ flight adaptations are helping scientists design better flying robots.
David Lentink says, “Understanding of animal flight has inspired the design of new aerial robots with more effective flight capacities through the process of biomimetics and bio-inspiration.” Airborne drones and the animals they mimic are featured in 18 new studies published online December 15 in the journal Interface Focus.
Though humans have been trying to build flying machines since 18th century, these new studies revealed that there is still much to be learned from looking closely at how birds, insects and bats take flight, keep themselves aloft and manoeuvre to safe landings.
These flying machines are rapidly becoming popular worldwide. There are plenty of flying animals that scientists can turn to for inspiration. About 10,000 species of birds; 4,000 species of bats; and well over 1 million insect species have evolved over millions of years to spread their wings and take to the air, and most of these species’ flight adaptations haven’t been studied at all, Lentink told Live Science.
There is a general belief that since we know how to make aeroplanes we know all about how to make and fly drones. Recently an online retail giant agent Amazon completed its first commercial delivery by drone in Cambridge, in the United Kingdom, on Dec. 7, the BBC reported. It seems quite possible that this experiment will create new hope among the online retailers for delivering the packages.
However still there are more or less 37 challenges faced in making drones that will need to be overcome before it becomes viable to use drones for delivering packages. There are some questions that have to be answered. If I order something online from where the package will be picked up? Where would they leave the package? How it finds it’s path to the destination with less amount of time taken to reach there?
When it comes for the retail giant like Amazon, it requires a huge amount of work like durability, level of automation, and system building that is currently needs for the long conversation.
