New Foldable Drone is Here




Researchers from the University of Zurich and Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland designed a drone inspired by birds that fold their wings in mid-air to cross narrow passages. The new drone can squeeze itself to pass through gaps and then go back to its previous shape, all the while continuing to fly, researchers said. “Our solution is quite simple from a mechanical point of view, but it is very versatile and very autonomous, with onboard perception and control systems,” said Davide Falanga, researcher at the University of Zurich.

In the future, researchers hope to further improve the drone structure so that it can fold in all three dimensions. Most importantly, they want to develop algorithms that will make the drone truly autonomous, allowing it to look for passages in a real disaster scenario and automatically choose the best way to pass through them. “The final goal is to give the drone a high-level instruction such as ‘enter that building, inspect every room and come back’ and let it figure out by itself how to do it,” said Falanga.