Drone Rafts Mimics Water Strider for Aquatic Takeoffs and Landings
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Who said fishing doesn’t lead to great ideas?
Adam Morrison, David Moser and Zac Cole, aeronautical engineers all, plowed through examples of amphibious aircraft in an attempt to design a water-landing base for UAS. Nothing fit.
“Let’s get out of the box here,” Morrison recalls. “Let’s think about everything that goes on water.” Then he remembered water striders, from fishing as a kid. Also known as water bugs, pond skaters or jesus bugs, the Gerridae family of insects possess the unique ability to walk on water.
Drone Rafts (Booth #1816) named its landing gear — currently made to fit the DJI Phantom — after the bug. The three co-founders can overlay pictures of both for a solid match, a perfect case of biomimicry. Both have front arms that extend wide and long, rear legs that extend at a narrower angle. “We just knew, from an engineering intuition, that’s going to be nice.”
That was in September. The units are now for sale via Drone Raft’s Kickstarter campaign, with a discount from the current $179 price available for Xponential 2016 attendees.
Designed with low-cost manufacturing in mind, the legs are made of carbon fiber tubing, the landing pods and brackets of high-impact polymer. It weighs 0.3 grams and attaches to the UAS with Velcro hook-and-loop straps in under a minute.
During testing, the men realized “more and more use cases” for the WaterStrider, which also provides height: rocky ground, sandy beaches, even tall grass that could otherwise cripple a low-hanging camera.
The toughest challenge: providing a balanced landing while retaining in-flight stability, something say they achieved after 40–50 paper iterations and nearly half a dozen constructed models.
“There have been a lot of do-it-yourself attempts,” says Morrison, recalling cut-up foam pool noodles. “This is the first real engineered solution that we’ve seen.”
