Japanese Dragon That Drone Can Autonomously Slither Through Small Openings Like a Flying Snake

The DRAGON, which stands for a “Dual-Rotor Embedded Multilink Robot with the Ability of Multi-Degree-of-Freedom Aerial Transformation,” is an awesome drone designed to look like a dragon. Researchers from the JSK Lab at The University of Tokyo, who built the amazing drone, put it to the test by making the drone slither through a small opening in an obstacle course like a flying snake.

DRAGON is made of a series of linked modules, each of which consists of a pair of ducted fan thrusters that can be actuated in roll and pitch to vector thrust in just about any direction you need. The modules are connected to one another with a powered hinged joint, and the whole robot is driven by an Intel Euclid and powered by a battery pack (providing 3 minutes of flight time, which is honestly more than I would have thought), mounted along the robot’s spine. (read more)

via IEEE Spectrum