A flying platform from ETH Zurich is made up of
autonomous wheeled vehicle that lock together to share the task of controlled
and autonomous flight. The robot, dubbed the “Distributed Flight Array,” was presented by
Raymond Oung, Raffaello D’Andrea, and others at this year’s IEEE International
Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) and was a finalist for best conference paper.
Each wheeled vehicle has its own power, motor, propeller,
flight control system, sensors, and wireless communication. The researchers write on their website:
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Joined together, however, these relatively simple modules
evolve into a sophisticated multi-propeller system capable of coordinated
flight.
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The individual
robots dock together at random, bound by magnets. But the robots doesn’t simply fly in a locked positions with
the others. They form a network, exchanging sensor information so that each robot can figure out how much thrust is needed (based on its place in the system) for the whole array to take off.
Once the system is hovering, the robotic modules can correct for disturbances, based on their place in the configuration and the system’s overall motion. When
the robot is done flying, it breaks apart and each robot falls harmless to the
ground. See it in action in a 2009 video below.
Interesting stuff–this could be useful for situation of surveillance
or search and rescue, where you might have to figure out on the fly what size and shape robot you need. Also, a robot
made of many identical modules like this is likely to be more robust–if one
parts breaks, it can reconfigure or substitute in a different one.
