Japanese Scientists Just Created a Flying Robot Dragon Drone Because Why Not?

Scientists at the JSK Lab in the University of Tokyo recently developed a small and nimble aerial robot that can maneuver and fit into tight crevices. This new technology is called DRAGON, which stands for “Dual-rotor embedded multilink Robot with the Ability of multi-deGree-of-freedom aerial transformatiON,” according to its creators via IEEE Spectrum.

The DRAGON, which is made up of four thrusters all connected to create a flying serpent-like robotic creature, was created by a six-man team of scientists from the University of Tokyo: Moju Zhao, Tomoki Anzai, Fan Shi, Xiangyu Chen, Kei Okada, and Masayuki Inaba. This awesome technology was presented at the ICRA 2018 in Brisbane, Australia last month.

The beauty of this design is that, the scientists made the robot this way so that it could be used inside the house where there are many obstacles on its flight path. It also proves to be quite difficult for regular drones to fly into small holes and windows, but the DRAGON can certainly fit through even the smallest of space.

As for its battery life, though, it’s said that this version of the DRAGON can only handle 3 minute of flight. It is being operated by an Intel Euclid, a development kit that’s packed with a depth camera technology, a quad-core processor, built-in memory and storage.

Aside from being able to transform into different shapes, this robot is also being developed as some sort of flying arm that can manipulate objects by picking them up like a two-finger gripper or even wrapping its body to items and move it.

Images via YouTube / IEEE Spectrum