University of Maryland Ornithopter can do back flips and misleads birds of prey

Ornithopters, or makholety - aircraft, flapping wings like a bird to create thrust, have long been known. But the vast majority of these devices are capable only of a beautiful imitation of bird flight . Both their wings are driven by one engine and flap synchronously, while birds are able to control the wings independently of each other, which allows them to perform complex maneuvers.

Ornithopter Robo Raven , created at the University of Maryland Robotics Center, has completely independent actuators for each wing. This allows him to perform complex aerobatic figures, which earlier makholet were unable to.



Creating such a robot turned out to be a very nontrivial task. Two main engines instead of one and the need to use a microcontroller for complex coordination of movements make the device heavier. It was possible to force the robo-crow to fly only with the use of 3D printing and laser cutting of the most lightweight parts and sophisticated modeling of the wing aerodynamics, which made it possible to achieve the optimum combination of thrust and lifting force in all wing operation modes.
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Robo-raven can fly at speeds up to 16 kilometers per hour, make barrels, flips and steep dives. If the first prototypes usually had to be repaired after hitting the ground, then the latest versions of the crow suffer from attacks by hawks during outdoor tests.

According to the project manager, Professor Satyandra Gupta, such robots can find practical applications in agriculture, environmental monitoring, or be used for video surveillance.