By now, most of us have seen a typical four-engine drone. These little doohickies are everywhere. They zip around sporting events, fireworks displays, races, and just about anywhere else there’s enough to fly in the sky. However, while we’ve been playing with the little helicopter-like things, engineers have been hard at work making a new type of drone that looks more like a dragon or a UFO than it does.
What is the Dragon Plane, and should we hide from it?
The Dragon Drone is one of the fiercest motorized things this writer has seen. This most radical eight-engine drone was created at the University of Tokyo. The researchers who created this mechanical beast have been working on it for years. However, recent updates have brought this little dragon into the limelight.
He explains that using eight individually controlled small ducted propellers, the aircraft can lift payloads of up to one kilogram, manipulate things like valves and revolving doors, and transform itself into various shapes to maneuver around obstacles. Small lithium polymer batteries power the device. The frame is kept lightweight with carbon fiber tubes. The drive states that the parts that make this UFO-like object are widely available.
While anyone can build this thing, very few can program it. Its ability to install itself with all eight engines in any configuration is nothing short of amazing. You know it’s a massive feat because when was the last time you saw something like this?
Normal requires almost no complicated programming because no matter what maneuver you do, the actuators are always in the same place and doing the same things. In the case of the Dragon’s, the thrust propellers can constantly move and shift to locations unsuitable for stability.
What could this UFO snake do?
At first, the video footage is so insane that you forget to wonder why the team did it. What can flying spaghetti do?
The advantage of a drone like this is that it can manipulate the world around it much more effectively than a conventional quadcopter. Drive describes the drone as something of a flying robot arm effect. It becomes an interesting tool when you think about it that way.
Until now, the drone’s limitations required it to stay in the lab. Still, Baby Dragon seems to be putting together quite well, especially when you see the earlier iterations of it.
In a world where UFO headlines regularly cite UFOs, new UAV designs need to be noticed and documented. Seeing this drone certainly opens up a choice that the thing we can’t explain doesn’t have to be just one thing. There seems to be a lot of things flying around us that most of us have never seen. Maybe dragons?
