If you get too close to a pufferfish, this undersea creature will blow up like a balloon to scare you away.
Now, a team of engineers at the University of Colorado Boulder has designed a robot that can do much the same thing—and it could make flying drones safer in the not-so-distant future.
PufferBot is the brainchild of graduate student Hooman Hedayati and his colleagues at the ATLAS Institute at CU Boulder. It’s a skittish machine: This hovering quadcopter drone comes complete with a plastic shield that can expand in size at a moment’s notice—forming a robotic airbag that could prevent dangerous collisions between people and machines.
The researchers will present their results virtually Oct. 25 at the International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS 2020). Think of it like introducing a bit of coral reef to the world of high-tech robotics.
Continue reading at University of Colorado - Boulder.
Image via Hooman Hedayati.