While drones are quite fancy, Researchers at the University of Tokyo’s JSK lab have taken the game to the next level. They have successfully made a dragon drone with several small drones and capable of transforming on the fly. It can change into different shapes, it can change into a squared or curved line and it can do all this of its own, analysing the space around it and deciding which shape it needs to take to navigate. watch video
video courtesy: IEEE Spectrum
The name of the drone is actually an acronym, standing for “Dual-rotor embedded multilink Robot with the Ability of multi-deGree-of-freedom aerial transformation,” or DRAGON for short. Its design was modeled off traditional dragon kites, where the tail is made up of a series of smaller, interlinked kites.
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All the smaller drones that make up the bigger drone are powered by a pair of ducted fans that can be adjusted to vector thrust in almost any direction. It has a battery pack running along its spine that provides up to three minutes of flight time.
So if you’re wondering where this is going to be useful apart from the circumstances where you have to navigate through tighter spaces, the team has bigger ambitions. They say the dragon could have up to 12 modules, and they are thinking of making it to something like a flying arm, interacting, moving and manipulating objects or even picking up things by using the two end drones like a pincer.
Moju Zhao, an assistant professor at the University of Tokyo, told Digital Trends that the company isn’t done yet. “We will [next] move forward to design a ‘multi-legged’ model with our basic link module. Then the robot can not only fly but also walk on the ground. This can benefit us in terms of the energy efficiency,” he said.
The tech could currently feature in situations involving navigating ducts or search and rescue. Maybe soon we can all have our own dragon just like Emilia Clarke from Game of Thrones
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