A large body of research, backed by startup developments, suggests that drones inspired by nature are the future of aviation.
Plans for the future of air transportation include seeing a small army of drones compete for space in the sky with 50 billion birds around the world. But there’s also the potential for a halfway house, where bird-like drones end up flying alongside the animals they’re inspired by and traditional quadcopters.
A new batch of drones inspired by nature, many of which are university facilities, is attracting investor attention. Animal Dynamics, which launched in 2015 as part of an Oxford University project and has since raised £35m, sells the Stork parafoil drone, which – although it doesn’t look very much like an animal – incorporates inspiration from nature in terms of How it works. (An earlier project, Skeeter, was more inspired by the motion of a dragonfly’s wings, including its flapping thrust.)
“We understand that there are things in nature that have really developed excellent solutions to problems we also face as humans,” says Ian Foster, Chief Engineering Officer at Animal Dynamics, one of the company’s 91 employees.
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This is something Matej Karasek sees echoes in his own company. Karásek is the founder of Dutch startup Flapper (formerly Flapper Drones), an offshoot of Delft University of Technology, which has two employees and has raised €100,000 in seed money. The university’s project has been going for more than two decades and was designed to try to develop a lightweight, biologically inspired drone.
Size and side size are a necessary evil, Karasek says. “One of the main advantages of biology-inspired drones is that they need to be small because of the physics,” he explains. This enables them to carry out more detailed missions with precision that much larger drones can’t — making a virtue of what might at first seem like a limitation.
Creating a large drone inspired by nature faces the same problem as the dodo: it can’t fly. The small size brings another benefit, too: “If you keep them small, they are very secure, not only because of their size, but because they have soft wings,” says Karasek.
Christopher Johansson of Lund University, part of an undergraduate research team that recently published a paper outlining the development of a robotic bird wing, also sees safety as one of the benefits of biology-inspired drones.
“Quadcopters are sensitive to damage,” he says. “If they hit something, they break. The flaps may be less sensitive and maybe something that can be turned back on again if it breaks.”
differentiation points
The Stork Drone from Animal Dynamics doesn’t see size as an issue. Its Parafoil can carry a payload of up to 135 kilograms up to 400 kilometres, thanks to the nature-inspired revolution of simply glide for kilometers without starting the engine – something Foster, the company’s chief engineering officer, believes makes it useful for working in the lowest building – even areas.
“We want to be able to work in very remote places,” he says. We provide assistance to an area whose infrastructure has collapsed. There will be no airport there.”
But for drone companies like Flapper trying to find a niche in deeper, more populous environments, safety is one area that sees its range of biologically inspired drones offer a major point of differentiation. “If you fly into something with a conventional drone, the sharp propellers can cut through things, but with soft wings, they actually bounce off things,” says Karásek.
Flapper was founded in 2019 to cater to the totally different market needs in the world of entertainment. Karsik envisions his bird-like planes replacing real birds in theme park shows. Then the epidemic hit, and demand in the sector suddenly collapsed. Since then, Flapper has looked beyond the entertainment industry, billing its drone as the world’s first commercially-inspired, commercially available drone that can take to the air.
And it’s not just about flying that the new range of biology-inspired drones can function differently than the quadcopters already on the market.
“There are still a bunch of things that animals do better than robotic drones,” says Arthur Holland Michell, author of a book on the history of drones. “The ability to stand on a range of surfaces and structures, for example. Or to take off and land vertically without using a lot of energy, to be agile and fast in flight, or to fly for a really long time.” For these reasons, biology-inspired drones hold great promise,” says Michel.
Security and accuracy
Lack of intervention is one of the ways Flapper hopes to market his wares. Besides the drone’s hoverability and safety, in the event of a collision, Flapper also says it’s quieter than competing conventional quadcopters. “It’s a different frequency,” says Karasek. “It’s not that high-pitched whirring of a fan, but more lower frequencies, less intrusive, and more pleasant.”
All of this is important, Flapper’s team believes, as drone use becomes more common and integrated into our daily lives. The commercial drone segment is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 24% each year through 2030, according to one industry analysis.
“As we use robots and flying robots more and more, we will be surrounded by them,” says Karásek. “Safety will become very important, because that is what limits the use of drones at the moment.”
Regulation has been cited by both Karásek and Foster as one of the main factors limiting their growth. “As we build trust with regulators, we can scale,” says Foster. “It’s a step-by-step approach. It’s not a case of developing a product, selling it to someone, and away you go. The regulatory framework doesn’t exist right now.”
Even if that is the case, these drones have their drawbacks. The most science fiction-like plans for the future use of drones involve carrying relatively large payloads, freeing road networks from cargo trucks, and instead taking products into the sky. This is something drones will struggle with.
At the moment, Flapper sells drones with a wingspan of 50 cm, which Karásek calls “very large”. The company plans to make the devices smaller rather than expand them. With the current state of technology and hardware, Karásek believes it is possible to make his drones half their current size, but that involves trade-offs, thanks to the limitations of the operator’s technology.
Karásek declined to share how many drones Flapper has sold, but said the company is focused on quality over quantity — and is striving to find markets outside the mainstream.
Karásek claims: “If we compete with toy manufacturers, they will imitate us.” If we compete [giant Chinese drone manufacturer] DJI, they’re going to copy us too. We are trying to find our own way to continue to develop the technology while maintaining our position.”
The current focus on drones inspired by nature reflects an interest in the romantic nature of the drone, Michel believes.
“In addition to the potential practical benefits, biologically inspired drones also have great narrative power,” he says. “It looks very futuristic, and capitalizes on a Neanderthal fascination. A drone resembling a bat or an eagle is likely to spark more interest than plain old quadcopters.”
Designs inspired by nature also benefit from a broader push toward sustainability, Foster believes.
“Nature is very effective,” he says. “Nature doesn’t have an enormous amount of energy to dispose of. We went through a phase as humans where energy was cheap. You could extract another piece of land and dump more fuel on it.”
The eco-inspired drone niche is also one that European countries feel better positioned to tackle, rather than compete with the Chinese and US giants for more mainstream drones, which already have well-established established companies. The point of differentiation is essential in a growing competitive sector. And in a place where off-the-shelf drones have traditionally been seen as quadcopters, these more lively inspired versions stand out.