AV News: DRAGON The Modular Drone

The search and rescue for a team of Thai soccer players has been dominating global headlines lately. Advanced technology has helped with the mission, but the boys were found by divers, not through tech.

However, there may be a not-so-distant solution for future search and rescue missions – a drone like no one has ever seen before.

Shown at the International Conference on Robotics and Automation, DRAGON (Dual-rotor embedded multilink Robot with the Ability of multi-deGree-of-freedom aerial transformatiON) is a ground-breaking multilink aerial robot.  Developed by a team of roboticists from the University of Tokyo, the machine can fly in a straight line, form a box, an L, twist and curve – basically it can change shapes depending on what it is required to do.

Formed by a number of linked modules, each piece has a set of ducted fan thrusters that allow the pieces to move in multiple directions – not just up and down; side to side.  Those pieces are linked together by powered hinge joints. The drone’s battery allows it to fly for up to 3 minutes and is driven by a small Intel computer.

Moju Zhao, an assistant professor at the University of Tokyo said “DRAGON does not have to contact with the ground, so the motion freedom is higher than other multi-linked robots from two aspects: Mobility and manipulation ability.”

This means the flying robot can do two key things:

Its mobility allows it to not only change shapes to fit through small holes, it can also autonomously decide what shape it needs to take to get the job done.

Its manipulation makes it like a flying arm, potentially making it capable of picking up objects with finger like grippers.

These two aspects, mobility and manipulation, could make this drone a key asset in future search and rescue missions.

The team has a long way to go before DRAGON could be used in any real-world scenarios, but the possibilities have many of us in the drone industry very excited about its potential.

For more information click on the links below:

https://www.digitaltrends.com/cool-tech/university-of-tokyo-dragon-drone/

https://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/drones/flying-dragon-robot-transforms-itself-to-squeeze-through-gaps

https://icra2018.org/awards/