FROW Rotary Wing Drone with Midair Wingspan Change

Here is a drone with a rotary wing that can fold and expand during flight. It is designed by birds’ ability to fold their wings to navigate through small spaces. FROW’s wings are made using an origami approach. As the researchers explain:

The two configurations can reduce their overall footprint by approximately 39% and 69% while in flight. A cyclic controller is implemented for controlling the translational motion, where the direction is controlled by pulsing the motors at a specific instance during each cycle of rotation.

FROW-A’s folding mechanism is controlled using continuous servos. FROW-P is the passively foldable configuration with dive mode capability.

[HT]