Micro Aerial Vehicles (MAVs) are being used in a wide range of applications such as surveillance, reconnaissance, inspection, and search and rescue. However, due to their size and mission profiles, they are prone to tipping over, jeopardizing their operation. Self-righting is an open challenge for fixed-wing drones since existing research focuses on terrestrial and multicopter flying robots with solutions that increase drag and structural weight. Until now, solutions for winged drones remained largely unexplored. Inspired by beetles, A research team at the Laboratory of Intelligent Systems, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne in Switzerland propose a robust and elegant solution where they retrofit a fixed-wing drone with a set of additional wings akin to beetles shell structured wings called elytra.
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| The MAV Ely has a set of fixed-wings akin to the beetle's hind-wings and a set of artificial elytra (Picture source: IEE) |
