NUAA robot

2023: Product Announcement

In early August 2023, Chinese researchers from the Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics (NUAA) reported the development of an insect robot capable of flying, landing on vertical walls, climbing and taking off.

Experts say that designing robots with flapping wings that can fly and climb sheer surfaces is a very difficult task. The fact is that the unmanned part requires sufficient lift to support a crawling robot as a payload. On the other hand, it is also necessary to achieve effective retention of the robot on vertical surfaces of different types. Plus, we need special controls that are responsible for switching between flight and wall movement modes.

Illustration of the work of the robot

The insect robot received a hybrid power system, which, in addition to wings, includes a rotor that allows climbing on vertical surfaces due to negative aerodynamic pressure in addition to a special bionic coupling mechanism. The drone is able to land, climb and take off from surfaces made of various materials, including glass, wood, marble, painted iron and even fabric.

The device received an unusual design: the legs for moving along the walls are located above the body. Thanks to this design, it is possible to quickly land on a vertical surface: the entire process takes only 0.4 s. The robot can move along the walls at a speed of about 6 cm/s. At the same time, the air-wall-air transition cycle takes 6.1 s. Such a sequence of actions is often found in nature, for example, when a fly, having flown a certain distance, sits on a wall, crawls into a place convenient for it and then flies to another object.^[1]

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