Superdrone flies like a bird, swims like a fish
American engineers claim to have built a drone that can fly like a bird and swim like a fish.
The “Naviator” has won the attention of the US navy, which has granted its inventors at Rutgers University $618,000 (£415,000) to develop their prototype into a machine that can take off for missions from a ship or submarine.
That will just be a matter of putting in the time, Javier Diez, the lead engineer, said.
The challenge lay in designing a machine with the power to go from flight to swimming and taking off again.
Dr Diez and his colleagues came up with their eight-propeller design by analysing what happened when a diving bird entered the water and how flying fish soared out of the sea.
The engineers worked out what these activities had in common and built the drone to emulate the lift and buoyancy achieved in nature. The power problem was overcome by altering the angles of the propellers. “You can do real acrobatics with it underwater, because it is weightless,” Dr Diez said.
