“We need to be able to exceed the performance of dragonflies on every measure,” he said.
DRAGON FLY WINGS 3D MODEL FREE DOWNLOAD MOD
He added that compared to birds or two-winged insects – where the length of the stroke, and angles and twist of the wing all have a bearing on flight – dragonflies also have a relatively simple control system.Īll of this makes them the a great model for a miniature drone and Thomas is confident that he’ll be able to provide the MoD with a device that replicates the efficiency, agility and accuracy of this creature. “They can even choose to glide if they want to.” “They can flap them all independently and turn the flapping on and off,” said Thomas. One of the keys to the insect’s aerial ability is the fact that it has independent muscles on each of its wings, allowing for greater bursts of acceleration, and more nimble manoeuvring than most other flying creatures. “If you look at Patriot missiles more than 90 per cent of the time they fail to hit the target,” said Thomas, “so there’s obviously something special in the airframe.” For instance, the darter dragonfly – a common sight throughout in the UK in the summer – catches prey on around 90 per cent of its flights. What’s more, thanks to an airframe that’s been optimised over hundreds of millions of years, they’re also capable of incredible accuracy. That’s an astonishing flight performance.” Dragonflies owe their incredible agility to independent muscles on each wing “About a quarter of them migrate from Africa to here in a single individual continuous flight.
“Dragonflies are fantastic,” he enthused. That’s an astonishing flight performanceĮstablished to exploit some of the incredible technical solutions provided by the evolutionary process, the firm’s technical pedigree comes from its chief science officer, Oxford University biomechanicist Prof Adrian Thomas.Ī world-leading expert on animal movement, Thomas – who wrote a seminal paper on dragonflies back in 2004 – has something of a soft spot for the insects. With a DSTL-funded concept study under its belt, the firm has now been awarded additional DSTL funding, as well as support through the MoD’s recently launched Innovation Initiative, to develop a fully functioning prototype that it claims could be ready to fly within 18 months.ĭragonflies are fantastic. About a quarter of them migrate from Africa to here in a single individual continuous flight. Weighing no more than 30g, and designed to cost less and fly for longer than other hand-launched drones, it could, its creators claim, help reshape urban warfare. Over the past year Oxford University spin-out Animal Dynamics has been working on the development of Skeeter, a tiny flapping winged drone specially designed for covert surveillance. A 3D printed scale model of Animal Dynamics' dragonfly inspired Skeeter UAV
And it’s a vision that a team of UK engineers and scientists now hope to make a reality through the development of a small surveillance drone that mimics the behaviour of one of nature’s most accomplished aviators: the dragonfly. It’s a compelling illustration of a capability that, as far as we know, doesn’t yet exist. In one of the key scenes from the 2015 thriller Eye in the Sky, British spies gather vital intelligence on suspected suicide bombers by flying a tiny robot insect into the heart of a terrorist compound.
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