The Indestructible Drone: crashes, reforms and flies again!

The reason that keeps us on hold from buying a drone is they are simply destructible. One crash and puff, it's gone. But things are about to change with this new drone that survives any crashes and drops like nothing happened. This insect-inspired drone is so flexible that it easily absorbs shocks when it crashes and automatically reforms itself making it flight ready within another second.

What made this drone "Indestructible"?

The main property lies in its design that is insect-inspired. Just like a wasp's wing is rigid and flexible at the same time. The researchers from Swiss National Centre of Competence in Research (NCCR) worked on this idea and came with this research product that looks so promising.

This drone prototype is made of a central case and a thin fiberglass external frame with four arms held together by four magnetic joints. This soft and flexible fiberglass helps to make the drone withstand crashes without having permanent damages. The circular magnet is placed at the middle making the magnetic connection to all those four magnetic joints. That is how the drone now becomes rigid and ready to fly. At the time of crashing, the drone flexes and deforms as the holding magnet gets out-of-place but doesn't split away. To avoid magnet from splitting away a rubber band is attached to the magnet from all four arms. That way, right after few seconds from the crash, the drone reforms and becomes flight ready as you can see it from the video above.

Verdict:

Well, this research is hinting towards more durable commercial drones in the future. But, is this drone really that indestructible? Honestly, the answer is "Not really". It is because this drone did survive 50 drops but from the height of 2 meters only. So, it's not the regular height for flying drones. The real question now is can this drone survive drops from like say 50-100m? Only when it can survive such drops then we could confidently say that it's an indestructible one. However, it is so good to see that not just the consumers but even the designers and manufacturers are also interested in making durable and crash-resistant drones.