Roboticists develop a bird-like robot that can jump into the air to launch itself into flight

A team of roboticists at École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, working with a colleague from the University of California, has designed, built and demonstrated a bird-like robot that can launch itself into flight using spring-like legs.

The group describes their robot in a paper published in the journal Nature. Aimy Wissa, an aerospace engineer at Princeton University, has published a News & Views piece in the same journal issue suggesting possible ways the innovation could be used in real-world applications.

Some types of drones, such as those with rotors, can rise straight up off the ground—others that are powered with forward-facing rotors or engines that push exhaust out the back must either race along a runway or catapult to get airborne. For this new project, the research team developed a new design for getting such craft into the air—jumping using spring-like legs.

The idea for springing into flight came to the researchers as they noted that crows near their office used their legs to spring into flight, which appeared to use less energy than using the wings only. That inspired them to design and build a flying robot based on the crow design.

The researchers noted that crows used their feet and legs for more than just launching into flight—they walked and ran around a lot. They also did a lot of hopping. That led the team to design a bird-like robot with legs that could be used in similar ways.

To simplify things, they chose a fixed-wing design for flight, rather than a flapping design. They also chose to use a split-V shape for the tail. An engine up front powered a single propeller.

After constructing their design, with its spring-loaded legs, the researchers conducted tests and found their little robot, which they named RAVEN (Robotic Avian-inspired Vehicle for multiple ENvironments), could walk around and hop in ways similar to crows and ravens. They also found that with some tweaking, the robot was able to jump as its rotor was spinning to ascend into the air.

The design, Wissa notes, appears to be “a viable solution to achieving multimodal locomotion for unmanned aerial vehicles.”

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