Morphy (drone)

2024: Product Announcement

At the end of June 2024, the laboratory for the development of autonomous robots of the Norwegian University of Science and Technology presented a custom-made "flexible" Morphy drone, capable of squeezing through gaps. If previously similar drones tried to make foldable, this time the inventors relied on new materials.

The compact quadcopter is equipped with four propellers, each of which is connected to the main body through an elastomeric connection printed on a 3D printer. Inside each of these connections is a 3D Hall sensor. Upon contact with the hard surface, the propeller begins to bend due to the hinge built into the screw lever. The sensor, located in the lever, measures the direction and degree of bending and transmits this data to the built-in 8-core Morphy microprocessor, which in turn adjusts the thrust of all four screws to compensate for the deformation and prevent the quadracompter from falling.

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This feature allows the drone to squeeze into both horizontal and vertical slots, which are clearly smaller in size than its own body. In addition, the drone is capable of withstanding strikes against walls or other obstacles at speeds of up to 3 meters per second. As a prototype, the Morphy drone weighs 260 g, is 252 mm wide and can fly for more than 12 minutes on a single battery charge. Along with Hall sensors, it also features optical depth cameras.

Collisions that used to have to be avoided have now become an acceptable risk, and zones impassable to robots of a certain size can now be overcome by self-compression, the researchers state. - New types of interaction with the environment can lead to the emergence of a new type of robot.[1]

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