Although the wings of performance improvement and 10 inches long robot - called the Dash Short-Term Dynamic autonomous hexapod tense - have discovered that the speed increase would not be fast enough to launch a rogue country. Wing flapping also improved the performance of the robot aircraft, in line with the hypothesis that gliding from tree population.
The research team led by Ron Fearing, professor of electrical engineering and director of the Biomimetic Systems Milli Lab at UC Berkeley, reported their findings online Oct. 18 in the journal Bioinspiration and Biomimetics journal.
The use of models of robots could play a useful role in the study of the origins of aviation, especially since the fossil evidence is so limited, the researchers said.
The first reveals the fear and graduate student Paul Birkmeyer in 2009, the Dash is a lightweight, high-speed robots manufactured at low cost, off-the-shelf materials, including those compatible with the feet of fiber runs an engine battery. Its small size makes it the introduction of the candidate in areas too narrow or dangerous for humans to enter, such as collapsed buildings.
A robot gets its wings
But compared to its biological inspiration, the cockroach, DASH had some limitations, which could sink. Remained stable, but will go beyond the barriers have been rather difficult for small robots, so the researchers attached to the dashboard with the wings and tail borrowed from the store-bought toy to see if it would help.
"Our overall goal is to provide the same features as the robot-terrain forklift that other animals are," said Fearing. "In the real world, there are occasions when the plane is better indexing, and other places where flying is not working, such as in cramped and restricted. We need a hybrid operation, and flying robots."
The researchers conducted tests on four different configurations of robot-shells, now called Wings + DASH. Spam test included only one with a tail, and another who just had the wing frames to determine how the wings influenced movement.
Its motorized wings, Wings + DASH speed is almost doubled, from 0.68 meters per second and feet only 1.29 meters per second. The robot can also be a steep hill, goes to the tilt angle of 16.9 degrees to 5.6 degrees.
"On the wings, so we improved the performance almost immediately," said the lead author of the study of Kevin Peterson, Ph.D. students in the laboratory of fear. "Not only the wings to make the robot faster and better to steep slopes, it can now be held by the descent. The version of the DASH wings could survive falling eight floors, but it was sometimes necessary to land on the head, where it landed and was attributable to chance. "
The wings of a better lift-to-strength ratio, to help the wings + DASH March in feet rather than precipitate unmanageable. When it hits the ground, the robot was able to continue their journey. Wind tunnel tests have shown that it is aerodynamically capable of slipping into a corner up to 24.7 degrees.
Brokers vs ground tree
The technical team work caught the animal flight expert Robert Dudley, a professor at UC Berkeley integrative biology who noted that the most dominant theories of the evolution of flight is essentially derived from rare recordings fossils and theoretical modeling.
He refers to the previous computer models suggest that the inhabitants of the earth, since the conditions would only triple the speed in order to build enough thrust for takeoff. The fact that the wings DASH + to double the size of the maximum speed of the blades do not provide enough momentum to launch a land animal. This result is consistent with the theory that the airline was born animals, slid down to a certain height.
"Fossil evidence we have suggests that the precursors of the morning shift had long feathers on all four limbs, and a long tail also has a lot of feathers, which must be mechanically advantageous arboreal gliders like runners is a country," said Dudley.
Dudley said the winged version of the DASH is not a perfect model for the proto-bird - it has six legs instead of two, and its wings using a piece of plastic instead of feathers - and therefore can not provide slam-dunk answer question of how flight evolved.
"What experiments was to demonstrate the feasibility of using robotics models to test hypotheses of flight origin," he said. "It is proof of concept that we can actually learn something useful on the results of laboratory tests through a systematic physical model. "
Other biomimetic robotic insects verifiable Millimeter Lab Systems is a winged, bipedal robots named Bolt (Ornithoptera bipedal locomotion for the transition) that most closely matches the size and the aerodynamics of the precursors, birds and flying insects.
"It's still remarkable that the addition of wings DASH resulted in significant improvements in their ability to move," said the fear. "This shows that the burning may provide some evolutionary advantage, but not theft."
