A drone company has made a dragonfly drone. It has mimicked the natural flight of the insect and is hoping it can help the environment, the people, and the military.
Dragonflies are the best predator in the animal kingdom. The drone company, Animal Dynamics, has decided to copy how the insect moves for their newest drone product. The dragonfly drone is named "Skeeter". It will be publicly available next year. Its blades are called eschewing copter blades and it is for flapping wings, Digital Trends reported.
The project is funded by the U.K.'s Ministry of Defence, via the Defence Science and Technology Lab (DSTL).
The flapping wings are better than the existing multi-copter ones, Thomas said. The response of the flapping wings to turbulence is so much better and faster than the multi-copter drones. The dragonfly drone can fly even if there are strong winds against it way. Moreover, the flapping wings of the drones copied from dragonfly have a high endurance. Additionally, the Skeeter drone will glide gracefully and its landing is perfect just like the insect, stated Oxford Today
If ever in the future drones will start to deliver food and do other stuff for the market and service, it can interact with the customers, Thomas said. Dragonfly drone will be very useful and helpful to many companies and the buyers alike. It will not scare the customers away as it will land fine and can reduce its speed to adapt to the circumstances at hand. Not only those things can this new insect-inspired drone can do, it can do what the existing drones can.
"Dragonflies catch and eat everything from wasps and hornets to every other insect you can think of. The reason they can do that is because they've evolved their flight apparatus over 300 million years of air-to-air combat," according to co-founder Adrian Thomas, who is also a professor of Biomechanics in the Department of Zoology at Oxford University
Skeeter or dragonfly drone will be less expensive and will be easier to maneuver. It will have four separate flapping wings, a camera, and a microphone. It will fly at a 45 kph speed up in the sky. Moreover, it will be just 12cm long and 30g in weight as its wings are very light.
