February 8, 2018 by Signe
Brinkløv, ScienceNordic
South American oilbirds combine
echolocation and extremely sensitive vision to find their way through dark
caves. Decoding how they do this could help develop autonomous drones.
The Danish
Drone Strategy aims to put Denmark at the forefront of
state-of-the-art drone technology.
Both the number of commercial users and authorised drone operators are rising.
But for security reasons, the law requires drones to operate within the drone
pilot's range of sight.
This limits the use of drones to
good visibility conditions and limits their full potential. For example,
routine monitoring tasks could be hindered by foggy or cloudy weather. And
emergency situations, such as a forest fire or a burning building, could
benefit from a drone controlled not by a pilot on the ground, but autonomously
via automatic recognition of obstacles.
The question is, how can we further
develop and optimise drone technology to avoid such concerns?
Oilbirds, form South America,
also known as the guácharo, might hold the answer. But before we get to that,
let's consider some examples of how we imitate nature.
Active sensory perception and
biomimetic inspiration
By mimicking the shape and
function of nature, biologists and engineers have created so-called biomimetic robots that
are experts in parkour, able to hear like a lizard,
and smell
like a sniffer dog.
No comments:
Post a Comment