Petrodrone Unmanned Aerial, Terrestrial, Aquatic Vehicle Is A Robot Dinosaur
Writing by Evan Ackerman on Monday, 6 of October , 2008 at 12:44 am
Back in the day, dinosaurs were pretty awesome. Now, they’re pretty extinct, but the 160-odd million years that they were around gave them some time to study up on things like flight dynamics. Researchers are attempting to create a versatile unmanned aerial vehicle based on the body of a pterodactyl, specifically an early Cretaceous Tapejara wellnhoferi that used to live in what is now Brazil. The dino had a wingspan of up to 6 meters and probably weighed up to 15 kilos, which is a lot of potential payload. The idea is to recreate the pterosaur on not just a structural level, but actually mimic its entire biology, including flight musculature to enable to robot to fly just like a real pterodactyl would have.
It’s not just flight, though. Somehow paleontologists have figured out (or guessed) that pterodactyls were able to walk quadrupedally, run bipedally, and even sail, using their wings as sails and their head crests as rudders to steer. There’s a lot of adaptability there, and Petrodrones will have the ability to “alter their wing shapes using morphing techniques to squeeze through confined spaces, dive between buildings, zoom under overpasses, land on apartment balconies, or sail along the coastline.”
The prototype should have a wingspan of 80cm, and my guess is they’ll tackle the most obvious (and in some ways, easiest since it’s been done before) flying aspect first. Details will be presented October 7th at the Geological Society of America’s joint annual meeting in Houston.
See an artist’s rendition of what Tapejara wellnhoferi may have looked like, after the jump.
Artwork by Joe Tucciarone.
[ Abstract ] VIA [ Scientific Blogging ]
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Category: Biorobotics, Research
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