Von Vögeln inspirierte Drohne kann zum Abheben springen

EPFL researchers have built a drone that can walk, hop, and jump into flight with the aid of birdlike legs, greatly expanding the range of potential environments accessible to unmanned aerial vehicles.

„As the crow flies“ is a common idiom referring to the shortest distance between two points, but the Laboratory of Intelligent Systems (LIS), led by Dario Floreano, in EPFL’s School of Engineering has taken the phrase literally with RAVEN (Robotic Avian-inspired Vehicle for multiple ENvironments). Designed based on perching birds like ravens and crows that frequently switch between air and land, the multifunctional robotic legs allow it to take off autonomously in environments previously inaccessible to winged drones.

„Birds were the inspiration for airplanes in the first place, and the Wright brothers made this dream come true, but even today’s planes are still quite far from what birds are capable of,“ says LIS PhD student Won Dong Shin.