A team of engineers from the University of California, Berkeley, have built a robot with artificial claws that mimics animal-like abilities.
Birds are capable of perching on almost any branch. They're able to adjust their flight, and no landing spot is hard for them.
Mark Cutkosky and David Lentink worked on the robot. The project wasn't all smooth sailing according to William Roderick, who also worked with them.
It's not easy to mimic how birds fly.
"After millions of years of evolution, they make takeoff and landing look so easy, even among all of the complexity and variability of the tree branches you would find in a forest," he said.
The robot can carry objects and land on a wide range of surfaces with the help of the claws.
It took over 20 tries.
The Stereotypical Nature-inspired Aerial Grabber is a four-legged drone.
The landing behavior of a small parrot was studied by researchers. The parrots flew between different perches in a controlled environment.
Five cameras captured their movement. The scientists fitted the perches with sensors that captured the force associated with each takeoff and landing.
The legs of the robot were based on falcons, but instead of bones, it had a 3D-printed structure that took them around 20 attempts to get right.
The equipment, including the 3D printer, was moved from Lentink's lab at Stanford to rural Oregon during the Pandemic.
Researchers could use the robot to study the environment.
He was able to show that their robot is able to pick up and carry objects, and land on all types of branches, in a real forest.
There are a lot of potential applications for this robot. Roderick is interested in how it can be used to further research nature.
The robot was able to provide valuable data for studying the weather in Oregon with a heat sensor. It could be used to help with search and rescue missions.
The motivation for the work was to create tools that we can use to study the natural world.
"If we could have a robot that could act like a bird, that would open up completely new ways of studying the environment," he said.
The research was funded by the US Air Force so we don't know what the future holds for the robot.
