It looks like a bird that bangs the wings but is a drone: spy aircraft for the military or « scarecrow 2.0 », what they are used for

Recently some specialized sites have told the news, which then proved to be an exaggeration or a fake news tout court, that one of the main world military powers was in possession of a drone spies perfectly identical to a flycapable of moving and behaving like an insect but able to photograph and identify the enemy within its lines and to report their presence to friends missiles that can thus affect inexorably accurately. Although the news has not been confirmed, it is not science fiction to imagine that a similar technology can materialize, in relatively short times. In fact, not many know that on the main e-commerce sites, already today, drones are on sale who are convincing replicas of falciansgood for making the children play that once they would use the remote controlled airplanes. Or how deterrent in the hands of the farmers who must remove the birds ready to steal the seeds or gods Airport managers who must solve the problem of flocks near the slopes.

The era of technological scarecrow began

While some models have a doors to simulate the movements of the predators, others instead are real drones with a « sparrow -shaped » shaped shell to be more easily maneuverable and above all to be faster and more effective. There are models even equipped with high efficiency laser to remove other birds. Some have an autonomous guide while others are more effective when they are managed by hand individually. It is even possible to gather the flocks in the desired direction.
A German Blueberry cultivation company has lost about half of its crop due to the starvans. The following year, using a drone of this kind, the damage dropped to about 5%.

From pigeons travelers to spy pigeons

Already 3000 years ago Egyptians and Persians used pigeons as strategic weapons to transport messages between the battlefields and the rear: today the more technologically more advanced bird -shaped drones could also return useful just like military and espionage toolsbringing loads such as a thermal camera or an invisible video camera to radar and human eye, capable of operating from a height of over 150 meters.

The case of Raven

Not very realistic in appearance but identical in the movements is that created by the researchers of the Boorobotics Lab of the APFL, a Swiss university based in Lausanne, in collaboration with the Neuromechanics Lab of the University of California Irvine: it’s called Raven (Robotic Avian-Inspired Vehicle for Multiple Environments) and, taken for granted the movement of the wings already widely experimented, the scholars have tried to work mainly on take-off, on the landing and on the movements on the ground. In their research, scientists have explored different take -off methods, including the erect position and free fall, but no one has proved to be better than what nature and evolution have made in millions of years: a short run -up and various jumps, that is, kinetic energy and potential energy. He then uses his legs to take flight like real birds and walk on the ground and jump over small obstacles (up to 26 cm in height), replicating exactly the ways of locomotion of the birds.
The researchers used mathematical models, computer simulations and practical tests to achieve a balance between the complexity of the legs and the total weight of the drone (0.62 kg). The distribution of weights was fundamental: the design of the legs precedes that the heaviest mechanisms are close to the « body » as in nature happens with the organs while a combination of springs and engines reproduces the stronghold and strong muscles. The light « palmate » legs consist of two articulated structures that incorporate a passive elastic joint, allowing a range of postures and movements. Which obviously meant enormous design, integration and control problems.