Whether you call them samara seeds, maple seeds, or helicopter seeds, most of us know seeds that spin to the ground with one or two blades. They have become a source of inspiration for several robotic autorotating gliders, and researchers at the Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD) can now make them dive quickly according to instructions. Video after the break.

In the previous version, the researchers showed that they could control the SAW (Samara Automatic Rotating Wing) by servo-driving the trailing edge of the blade. It gets input from the onboard 3-axis magnetometer and GPS, and continuously adjusts the control surface according to its direction to make it fly in the selected direction. The latest paper (PDF) focuses on the new ability of the aircraft to switch from autorotation to fast diving and return to autorotation. Named dSAW (diving SAW), it can stall by changing the angle of the control surface to almost 90° to the wing and fall like a rock. It only needs to move the control surface back to its normal rotation position to exit the dive. The kinetic energy accumulated during the dive will be very quickly converted into rotational energy, which will cause its vertical speed to instantly slow down to almost zero before returning to normal taxiing.

We can certainly see that this is useful when the dSAW needs to lower its altitude quickly to avoid being pushed off the course by the wind. The video below demonstrates this by dropping three dSAWs from an RC airplane. According to instructions, they spread out, each heading in a designated direction, and then repeatedly switched between dive and autorotation modes as they descended to the ground. The researchers envision this will be used to spread sensor units over a large area in a controlled manner from an aircraft. What will you use this technology for? Please tell us below.

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It's more like the shape charge in precise height and direction towards the target or CBU-89 with brain.

Now it only needs one of the small carbon dioxide tanks to power the tip of the rocket, so that it can spin on its own for power flight... I suspect that even those small tanks that are under tremendous pressure can give it so much time to lift, and It may be that a reasonable extra quality requires the whole thing to be enlarged a bit to truly achieve power flight, at best it is just a little more style...

But it would be interesting to see one of these things spinning... even a small amount of forced rotating lift can make these things spread out in the area where they should be very useful. Those small carts are beautiful and cheap. Safety. Although I am not sure if the control electronics or servo system can really handle this rotation speed or control the air pressure generated on the surface-make the rocket tip force correct so that it can rotate enough to lift but the electronics can be less fast and not handle maintenance The update speed required for directional control or the servo can’t bear the load can be cumbersome-although simple, it can be tried and tested. After all, the tip of the rocket is just a small hole in the pressure tube..

In addition, as long as the geometry of the blade is such that even if the servo cannot perform any of its work, it will rotate and rise. Therefore, use the power of the rotation to lock the blade to the raised position, and then let it rip (until the gas is exhausted or turn off the faucet), once the rotation speed is reduced-this will not take long, it can continue to control its fall .

The bomb may be interesting.

Multiple precision-guided bombs. It is estimated that they will be good at anti-personnel and anti-structure. There may also be anti-vehicle bombs, but this is difficult because most vehicles can get past it. You must enter from above to avoid visual detection and falling. They can be enlarged or reduced as needed, and the simple design makes them cheap. Of course, I think the military version will provide some kind of propulsion during periods of significant performance improvement, while the larger models have stable high performance. The main thing is to regain a high degree of ability, increased horizontal mobility and limited wandering ability. Imagine hovering a bomb over the enemy’s camp and forcing a surrender by immediately and decisively destroying the only other option. Or when you need to kill 3 different targets in 3 different locations precisely at the same time.

The military application of this technology is very obvious, which will help to improve the intelligent anti-tank cluster bomb

These (no pun intended) belong to the category of "loitering ammunition", as well as suicide drones, etc...

I want a body with a Tanooki Mario shape that can lift its legs when it enters stall mode.

I always think that maple seeds are a good model for electronic fireworks. Imagine smaller versions of these gliders. Each glider has one or more RGB LEDs. Once the pre-programmed display sequence is completed, the glider will automatically rotate to a large funnel guided by an infrared beacon or the like, where they will be wirelessly charged and give a new display sequence, and then configured to "descent" mode to restart Start by air cannon or railgun.

This is amazing. I have never been more afraid of a machine that suddenly fell from the sky to assassinate me. :)

There is bad news for you. These have been around for a while... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loitering_munition There are also a bunch of small suicide drones from various small companies.

NASA proposed this arrangement decades ago for a panoramic camera to scan when it descends to Mars (I remember a "Samara camera"). Given that it is easy to keep the orientation reference at this time, this seems like an interesting idea-the video will provide a columnar view of the recomposed frame.

Found it: https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/19890000054

In my opinion, this technology can be a good substitute for parachutes. This will allow for faster descent into enemy areas and still provide lift when approaching the earth. In addition, of course, it can also be applied to engine failures in airplanes and helicopters on a larger scale.

The goods fell? This seems to make the paratrooper a little dizzy.

I believe that at that time, people were interested in disposable cardboard autonomous aircraft for emergency rescue delivery and how to minimize the number of parts. Several ideas initially discussed on HAD were well researched and implemented.

This is really amazing, actually. Unfortunately, as others have said, the most obvious application is a targeted smart bomb, which is sad.

I disagree. The bomb should be moved quickly to avoid any possibility of interception and deployed from a height for the safety of the bomber. They can already turn the target for a few kilometers. This is ideal for dispersing the sensors several kilometers away from the mortar. Smart bombs may make sense for anti-personnel/assassination devices, but there are also better options.

You can make some very beautiful areas on about 50 of them to reject sound and seismic sensors, arranged in a grid around an automatic mortar.

What about astronauts reentering the aircraft instead of parachutes?

A small problem with rotating gravity?

Although its obvious intention is military (otherwise they would not use C130 in their chart) it will become an interesting toy. Put a hook on it and use a slingshot to pull it to the height when it is in the descending state, and then let it enter the rotating state at the top of the arc. It may not need any intelligence at all, just a spring clasp, which will release the blade after a few seconds. I have a feeling that I had such a toy glider a long time ago, but it is not a rotating wing, but an ordinary plane.

The C-130 is actually the remote scale model of the C-130 they tested. I'm not sure if they have a military meaning, this may be the only remote control plane they can use easily.

In order to confirm the suspicion of this intention, the project was partly funded by "Temasek Lab@SUTD":

"Temasek Lab@Singapore University of Technology and Design (TL@SUTD) is a national defense application jointly established by the Ministry of National Defense (MINDEF) and Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD) in October 2012. At the same time, it builds technical and talent capabilities in key research areas. ."

From https://temasek-labs.sutd.edu.sg/about

It is sad and frustrating how much effort (and money) humans have put in to kill each other. Imagine if all of these were used for other projects, such as fighting global warming, disease (someone infected with the virus?)...

It seems that they have absconded from the Southwestern Technology product mark a few years ago.

I was thinking that it might be a good idea to plant trees? Because it can dive, it may help plant seeds underground. Imagine planting tens of thousands of trees at a time just by flying a cargo plane over the area. Planting trees in off-travel areas can be very useful.

On the other hand, it may be equipped with sensors to detect wildfires. Maybe you can disperse these sensors in fire-prone forests and jungles, connect them with LoRaWan, and you can have a wildfire monitoring network.

Natural restoration seems to be a suitable use for this technique, as it is inspired by maple seeds in nature.

The seed container used by Droneseed achieves this without any technology. Each drone flight carries about 25 kilograms of seed containers to replant 3000 square meters. As far as you think, adding some sensors with sensors to each drop will add another layer of data to all the land they replant. The only disadvantage is that the equipment needs to be recoverable to comply with Droneseed's environmental protection concept.

I think YR means large-scale and affordable reforestation.

Droneseed can carry approximately 250 seeds per flight (approximately 100 grams and 25 kg payload per "pod"). Considering the flight time and range limitations of traditional multi-rotors, this is difficult to expand. Think about the number of batteries you need to keep charging on the ground in an operation involving 5-10 such drones.

Using long-range fixed-wing drones/actual aircraft, these automatic rotating devices can deploy sensors/seeds/ordinary multi-rotor reachable places where people cannot reach.

Is it a good idea to use it to grow trees? Because it can dive, it may help plant seeds underground. Imagine planting tens of thousands of trees at a time just by flying a cargo plane over the area. Planting trees in off-travel areas can be very useful.

On the other hand, it may be equipped with sensors to detect wildfires. Maybe you can disperse these sensors in fire-prone forests and jungles, connect them with LoRaWan, and you can have a wildfire monitoring network.

Natural restoration seems to be a suitable use for this technique, as it is inspired by maple seeds in nature.

When you consider that one of their wing designs is very close to the legs of a hexapod, this may become an amazing sci-fi tool/weapon in war, if so? Maybe a bunch of legs folded to form a body, or even some crazy version with multiple of these interlocks?

It would be like this: 1) Release some from the plane, let them rotate and move outwards, use the laser to get a basic 3D map of the area 2) Use the camera at the same time (different types?) to get more information about the area (surface Type, object type, etc.) 3) Move back together and enter "landing mode" 4) Deploy a parachute above the ground (or return to rotating mode and build to withstand the impact)?) 5) Fold into a hexapod (or interlock?) And the map area (depending on the size, can they do it, weaponized? :P)

Those who write science fiction please accept this idea ;)

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