The Indestructible Fiberglass Drone – That Can Survive Most Crashes
This is great news for the future of drones. The researchers at the Swiss National Centre of Competence in Research and the Floreano Lab at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in
Lausanne have managed to create a flexible drone that can recoil during a crash. This means that it has a lesser chance of being broken or having dents.
I think this is great for a very good reason. It opens up opportunities for the top dogs of the drone manufacturing industry. In the future, we may see something expensive like the DJI Phantom series that have expensive equipment on them and they will be protected properly. You get all the good features, good looks and you also have maximum protection. I’m quite
excited to be honest.
How Indestructible Fiberglass Drone Works
Most of today’s drones are built with carbon fiber, but this drone’s external frame is built with a flexible fiberglass which uses four magnetic joints in order to hold together it’s 4 arms and connect to the central core. The thickness of the fiberglass layer is only 0.3mm and it can take some serious collisions without any permanent damage. In order to cushion the impact between the fiberglass case and the drone’s floor there is a visco-elastic foam that acts as a cushion and it contributes to mitigating the sudden deceleration that is experienced by the case and its components.
Whenever an impact occurs, the magnets attached to the frame detach and the outer frame is going to become soft and deformable. This allows the drone to absorb the shock from the central case with no problem and it prevents permanent deformation of the arms and frame.
After it stops bouncing, the magnets attach back and the frame becomes solid again and it all snaps back in place, This neat trick permitted the drone to crash 50 times without any permanent damage. Quite an impressive feat.
Conclusion
The future of drones is quite bright. Soon enough we will be able to risk more in order to get the perfect shots we want. Also, there will be many beginner-friendly drones, since you won’t be able to damage them that easily.
