Drone Built With Robotic Arms
A popular science-based online body called FUTURISM has released a video that detailed the newly made drone of quadcopter model equipped with two robotic arms to pick up an object and drop it at a particular location.
According to the information shared by the “Growth Hackers”, the drone is said to be the world’s first drone to be fitted with robotic arms, to lift and shift objects such as chairs, tables, antenna, or make a seal on leaking parts of a building roof.
The arms are humanlike in appearance due to their ability to twist and hold object properly during their gripping action. Also, according to the video, the arms have joints for flexibility and can be moved in any direction automatically. It is one of the unique design of the drone technology because it differentiated the drone from other existing quadcopter drones.
A picture below reveals the action of the arms during the product testing where the drone was able to lift about 5kg weight plastic chair and repositioned it in another location. Besides that, other possible performances of the drone were revealed through the details obtainable from its testing.
There are other distinct features of the drone and they include;
- The use of six electric motors and rotors instead of the conventional four rotors that had been a popular design for quadcopters.
- The motors were positioned and fixed in a hexagonal style to give proper uniformity and equilibrium during the drone flight which is intended to balance aerodynamic torque and help the drone to have zero angular acceleration when all the motors’ rotors are spinning at the same angular speed.
According to dronezon.com’s publication, the vertical lifting of the drone of the quadcopter design will occur only when the force created by the whole rotors is uniformly able to equal or exceed the force of gravity and that is the basic idea behind the working principle of all aircraft. The higher the force, the more stable, functional, and speed the drone would possess.
The spinning of the rotors usually fixed at the top of the motors will always push certain volume of air downward during operation, the action in a combined form will force large volume of air downward.
Thereby forcing the entire weight of the drone upward which is a principle obtainable from the Newton’s third law of motion which said that “for every action there is equal and opposite reaction” the downward movement of the air will create the opposite reaction which will force the drone to move upward thereby creating a lift.
But the volume of air to be dragged downward for drone lifting will be determined by the designer and will be proportional to the weight of the drone as well as the number of motors or RPM of each motor in regard to the blade rotor size and weight.
The climbing of hills by the drone and the descending is just a matter of adjustment in the motors’ speed, climbing will mean an increase in motors speed (RPM) uniformly. While descending and landing will be possible through the decreasing of the motors speed (RPM) uniformly.
The directional change of the drone will be possible through the variation of the speed of sets of motors’ rotors spinning in a uniform direction against the sets spinning in the counter direction.
For this latest drone design which has the special feature of six electric motors positioned at uniformly spaced circular directions, such a design is believed to aid the drone to obtain higher stability and upward thrust which the drone needs during the lift and shift operations in the case of heavy objects.
However, no matter the design feature, the vehicle can only lift object whose weight is not beyond its lifting capacity.
- Another feature is the functionalities found in the drone, which include joining things together, cutting off electric cables and reconnecting it back (a feature that will help public power workers avoid climbing of poles and its potential dangers), turning off a television antenna, displaying of lifesaving equipment and other wonderful functions.
The new drone has shifted the popular use of quadcopter drone for surveillance, video coverage and pictures taking to something more advanced such as rescue mission for dangerous locations, the possible future lifesaving vehicle can be obtained through the design.
According to Futurism,” this new versatility will mean that a drone could fly into a situation that might otherwise be dangerous for a worker” the belief is that the remotely controlled vehicle could serve more important mission than just for graphic coverages if special drones were to be built with robotic arms.
It is an advancement that could possibly reduce the type of work to be carried out by humans in the future.
