While a skydriver falls from the sky or when a starship adjusts its position, they use air resistance to steer. This mechanism is used by this Floaty, a skydiver Robot made by Youtuber and researcher as a part of his PhD research which flies in a wind tunnel.
Floaty has flaps that tilt and adjust the air dynamics while floating, like how a skydriver spreads or tucks their arms and legs to change directions. At first the robot kept spinning out of control, even though the simulations looked perfect. After a lot of tweaking and refining the design, floaty finally flew.
The main working principle of Floaty is the drag force, the same force you feel when you stick your hand out of a moving car. Floaty changes its shape to increase or decrease drag, which helps it steer inside the wind tunnel. It also uses an IMU sensor (Inertial Measurement Unit) to detect orientation and an external tracking system (OptiTrack). This system consists of multiple cameras distributed around the wind tunnel, which accurately measure the robot’s position in real time. Since there’s a tiny delay in data transmission, the robot predicts its next moves using a physical model, making its movements smoother.
This research shows how to take a simple idea and create a working model, and this study could help improve position stabilization in future flying robots.
