Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff, a production of I Heart Radio,
Speaker 1: Hey brain Stuff, Lauren Vogel bomb here. But when it
Speaker 1: comes to accomplishing deft aerobatic maneuvers, aerial drones still aren't
Speaker 1: as good as birds and other flying animals, though engineers
Speaker 1: are working on it, and they're also working on another
Speaker 1: avian feet of agility, the ability to land and perch
Speaker 1: on just about any object or surface, ranging from tree
Speaker 1: branches to telephone wires without falling off. This is perhaps
Speaker 1: more complicated than it sounds. A gripping random surfaces is
Speaker 1: easy for many birds and other animals, including many humans,
Speaker 1: but it's difficult for robots. Think about how you grip,
Speaker 1: say a door handle or a coffee cup. You have
Speaker 1: to figure out where the object is and how wide
Speaker 1: to open your hand, and how to close your hand
Speaker 1: around it, and how tightly to close your hand without
Speaker 1: breaking the handleboard, the cup or breaking your hand for
Speaker 1: that matter. It's not easy for all humans. Now imagine
Speaker 1: you were trying to balance on that object that you're gripping.
Speaker 1: But researchers at Stanford University have developed a device called
Speaker 1: a stereotyped Nature inspired Aerial grasper or SNAG for short
Speaker 1: that can be attached to a quad copter drone to
Speaker 1: give it feet and legs resembling those of a falcon.
Speaker 1: When equipped with the device, the drone is able to
Speaker 1: not just fly around, but catch and carry objects and
Speaker 1: then perch on various surfaces. Of course, a duplicating the
Speaker 1: agility of birds wasn't easy to do. The researchers shot
Speaker 1: video of small parrots flying back and forth between special
Speaker 1: perches that contained sensors to measure the physical forces of landing, perching,
Speaker 1: and take off. One of the researchers, William Roderick, explained
Speaker 1: in the Stanford News release in December. What surprised us
Speaker 1: was that the birds did the same aerial maneuvers no
Speaker 1: matter what surface as they were landing on. They let
Speaker 1: the feet handle the variability and complexity of the surface
Speaker 1: texture itself. Giving a drone similar abilities required technological ingenuity.
Speaker 1: A snag has a three D printed structure that emulates
Speaker 1: a falcon's lightweight bones, and each of its legs is
Speaker 1: equipped with one motor for moving back and forth and
Speaker 1: a second one for grasping mechanisms in the robots legs
Speaker 1: are designed to absorb impact energy and passively convert it
Speaker 1: into grasping force the way that a bird's tendons would.
Speaker 1: As a result, a drone equipped with the device can
Speaker 1: clutch something strongly in just twenty milliseconds. Once the robot's
Speaker 1: feet are wrapped around a perch, its ankles lock, and
Speaker 1: an accelerometer device that measures changes in motion detects the
Speaker 1: landing and triggers a balancing algorithm to stabilize it on
Speaker 1: the perch elsewhere. Researchers at other institutions have also been
Speaker 1: working for years on giving drones the ability to land
Speaker 1: and hang onto something. For example, in researchers at Northeastern
Speaker 1: University unveiled a technology that allows a flying drone to
Speaker 1: hang upside down like a bat. Being able to land
Speaker 1: in various places helps drones to conserve energy that they
Speaker 1: would expend by having to remain airborne. That's really useful
Speaker 1: because the flight time of robotic aircraft is limited by
Speaker 1: their battery power, and their battery power is in turn
Speaker 1: limited by the weight that the aircraft can carry. Today's
Speaker 1: episode is based on the article Robotic drones can now fly,
Speaker 1: stop and perch just like birds on how Stuff Works
Speaker 1: dot Com, written by Patrick J. Tiger brain Stuff is
Speaker 1: production of I heart Radio in partnership with how stuff
Speaker 1: works dot Com, and it's produced by Tyler Klang. Four
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