Researchers Create an Aerial Robot That 'Flies' Like a Jellyfish

A team of engineers at the University of New York University has created a tiny aerial robot whose flying motions replicate a water dwelling creature-Jellyfish.

Most often scientists draw inspiration from insects to creatures in sea to design a new class of smart robotic devices. It was the flying insects that caught the attention of the Swiss robotic engineers and based their latest creation of the Gimball-flying robot on flying insects.

Similarly in the latest creation, the researchers drew inspiration from the Jellyfish and devised a new flapping wing flight that doesn't require any control or feedback system in order to stay stable.

Prior to this there were several approaches made in creating aerial robots that mimic the flight of insects like the fruit fly. But the biggest challenge was the flapping of the fly is extremely unstable. Insects constantly monitor their environment and sense any approaching predator to adjust their flying patterns. Apart from this, insects are fast, adjusting their flying motion within fraction of a second to respond to the change.

But to fix all this in a single device was extremely challenging. That's when the study lead Leif Ristroph of New York University, decided on devising a new device that is similar to the swimming motions of a jellyfish.

"Our [robot] is an aerial jellyfish if you will," Leif Ristroph, assistant professor of mathematics at NYU who designed the tiny machine, told NBC News. "No one's ever built this, and as far as we know nature never built it either to fly in air. Maybe that indicates that it's a bad idea? In any case we got it to work, so maybe not that bad," Ristroph added.

The two gram robot flies by flapping four wings that are arranged like petals around the waist and are connected to a power source by wire. The wing of the eight centimetre wide robot mimics a jelly and the fluttering flight is more similar to that of a moth. The newly designed aerial robot can hover, ascend and fly in a particular direction. They don't have their own power source and cannot steer on their own or via remote control.

The size of the machine depends on the weight and the power of the motor. But Ristroph said that these pint-sized robots are "sort of dumb." 

The new, flying jelly fish like machine shows a novel technique of flight that could transport tiny robots in future for surveillance, search and rescue operations as well as monitoring the atmosphere and traffic.

The study was presented at the American Physical Society's Division of Fluid Dynamics.                  

 Click Here to check the newly designed aerial robot.