Fish, Birds and Bats Inspire Navy’s Next-Gen Drones

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Fish, Birds and Bats Inspire Navy’s Next-Gen Drones
By Katie Drummond

October 8, 2010 | 12:11 pm The Pentagon wants robots that can maneuver through pretty much any environment, from dense forests to towering city skyscrapers. So the Navy is trying to learn from creatures that can already do it all, by funding a consortium of researchers to study the travel patterns of fish, bats, birds and insects.

And it’s hardly the first time the Pentagon’s expressed interest in applying the talents of the animal kingdom to unmanned air travel. They’ve already invested in research to create handheld drones that mimic the “echolocation” abilities of bats and mini-drones inspired by hummingbirds.

Now, researchers led by a team at the University of Washington have received a five-year, $7.5 million grant from the Office of Naval Research, to evaluate other animal features that would make for better autonomous aerial vehicles. One major focus of the project will be to eliminate or minimize the need for a human operator, whose own instincts aren’t always enough to guide rapid travel.

“For vehicles operating at high speeds in highly complex and dynamic environments (like windy forests for example), a wireless connection back to a human operator might not be fast enough to keep the vehicle from crashing or allow it to be as maneuverable as it could be,” UW researcher Kristi Morgansan tells Danger Room.

Morgansan imagines that drones of the future might have features like “flapping wings, flexible surfaces, and sensors that are lighter, lower power and use less energy…than what is used currently in engineered systems.” By accumulating data from flight studies, researchers will create mathematical models that are transferable to engineered systems.