"If at first you don't succeed, try, try again" seems to be the motto of a flying robot that picks itself back up after crashing into surrounding objects.
Called the AirBurr, the bot is equipped with a unique "Active Recovery System," enabling it to withstand collisions, relaunch and continue flying.
Researchers at EPFL, a Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, were inspired to create the AirBurr after observing the way insects move.
"Even though they manage to avoid most obstacles, they still manage to fly into windows and fly into walls -- yet it's okay; they don't break," said project leader Adam Klaptocz. "They fall to the ground, they get back up again and they keep flying."
Researchers aimed to build a robot that could explore hard-to-reach places where humans and other machines can't navigate, such as caves and collapsed mines.
"We try to take inspiration from nature to build robots that are better adapted to navigate in the real world that we have around us, and not just the laboratory environment," Klaptocz added.
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