Students at the University of Maryland’s Clark School of Engineering have turned to nature to create a flying device that can hover and perform surveillance duties, and that could lead to applications for military and emergency services. The enigmatic maple tree seeds (or samara fruit) -- and the unique spiralling pattern with which they glide to the ground -- have intrigued children and engineers for decades. Now aerospace engineering graduate students have applied the seeds’ design to airborne devices and created what they believe to be the world's smallest controllable single-winged rotocraft.
Researchers first tried to create an unmanned aerial vehicle that could mimic a maple seed's spiralling fall in the 1950s. Foiled attempts have followed regularly ever since as these tiny vehicles (less than 1 m) have been easily knocked off course by wind.
Unfazed by recent failings, an open challenge was issued to the engineering students in June this year to design a viable craft.
The Clark School students have solved the steering problem and provided a solution that allows the device to take off from the ground and hover, as well as perform controlled flight after being deployed from an aircraft. The device can also begin to hover during its initial descent, or after being launched by hand.
Graduate student Evan Ulrich and others in the research group, led by Clark School Dean Darryll Pines (Professor, Department of Aerospace Engineering), incorporated a new part to their device, a curved, comma-shaped component in the body of the device, which provides more stability and gives the device power to hover.
Success was gained by physically separating the propulsion and stability components of the craft. The wing of the vehicle is designed to function in the same way as natural samara and performs a stable autorotation during descent. The propulsive section of the vehicle functions like the tail rotor on a helicopter, though instead of preventing rotation, (as in the case of a helicopter), it maintains rotation (to allow it to hover).
Flight time of the Samara-I is roughly 20 minutes with a 25 gram, 480mAh 7.4 V two-cell Lithium-Polymer battery, for a total vehicle mass (GW) of 75 grams. The maximum gross take-off weight (GTOW) of the vehicle is 125 grams, and the maximum dimension is 27 cm.
The vehicle has been demonstrated at University of Maryland events, the American Helicopter Society Annual Forum, the Smithsonian Udvar-Hazy Air and Space Museum, and at the 100th anniversary of the College Park airport.
Elektor encourages its readers to help the Clark School students develop electronics to refine the operation of their Samara rotocraft, as well as implement remote control.
Source: Gizmag
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