Students build new ‘hybrid drone’ — watch it fly in the air and then seamlessly dive underwater
Students have built a hybrid drone that can transparently pass from air to air to swimming in water.
Students have developed a prototype work of the hybrid drone for a baccalaureate thesis at Aalborg University in Denmark, and recently shared a video of the drone in action.
In the video, the drone takes off next to a large pond of water, then quickly dives underwater. He then moves under the surface for a few seconds before drawing water directly to fly again. The video shows the drone repeating the tip several times from different angles.
Andrei Copaci, Pawel Kowalczyk, Krzysztof Sierocki and Mikolaj Dzwigalo, who all study applied industrial electronics, have reached this remarkable water air transition using propellants of not variable, which have blades that can rotate to different angles to match the two different environments.
“The development of an aerial underwater drone marks a major step in robotics, showing that a single vehicle can operate effectively in air and water thanks to the use of variable propellers,” said students at Live Science in a joint email.
This is not the first aerial water hybrid drone to be built. Researchers from Rutgers University in New Jersey developed a hybrid prototype This could perform a similar action in 2015, while Chinese scientists showed a Drone passing from air to water in 2023.
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The students designed, built and tested their drone on two semesters in their university, according to a Linkedin Post by Petar DurdevicAn associate professor who heads the research group of offshore drones and robots at Aalborg University.
They started by creating a drone model and designing the propeller system of variable height. The angle of the blades, or not of the propeller, is higher during the flight to create more air flow, while lower in the water to minimize the drag and increase efficiency. The propellers are also able to provide a negative thrust to increase maneuverability underwater, students said.
The team used a 3D printer and a computer control machine – another automated manufacturing equipment – to obtain the parts they needed for construction, and scheduled the drone with personalized software. Finally, they went to tests.
“We were surprised to see how much the drone goes from water to the air,” said the students.
The new drone is just a unique prototype, but this type of technology has a variety of potential real world applications, from emergency response to war. “Some of the applications are military inspections, ships, marine exploration, research and rescue,” said students.
