Toy-inspired remote-controlled aircraft aims to conquer rough terrain and reach places that other drones can't – through a series of hops
REMEMBER Weebles, the toy figures that famously wobbled but never fell down? Well, if you crossed one with a miniature helicopter you'd end up with something like the US army's forthcoming reconnaissance craft: the hopping rotochute.
This self-righting probe is designed to travel deep into obstacle-ridden spaces such as caves and rubble-laden buildings to video what it finds. It is being developed for the Army Research Lab in Aberdeen, Maryland, by Eric Beyer and Mark Costello, a pair of robotics engineers at Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta.
The army wants this capability because today's military robots, which run on small tank-style tracks, cannot cope with irregular surfaces and obstacles such as rubble or boulders. "They usually have trouble and get stuck with even low obstacles and walls a couple of feet high," says Costello. Small helicopters are one alternative, but continuous flying drains the batteries fast.
So their answer - which Costello freely admits is Weeble-inspired - is a rotor-powered, bottom-heavy, self-righting vehicle that spends most of its time on the ground, thus conserving battery power. Instead of flying around, it hops, using a pair of contra-rotating rotors (to avoid the need for a tail rotor) mounted on an aluminium base. All this is encased in a spherical cage made of strong carbon-fibre spars
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