December 19, 2018

Good Morning,

It seems like drones these days can do just about anything and go just about anywhere. Now drones can fold themselves up to help when navigating narrow spaces. That could be huge!

Learn about this and more interesting stories from the scientific community in today's issue.

Until Next Time,
Erin

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*-- New foldable drone can navigate narrow holes --*

Drones can be used to explore environs too difficult and dangerous for humans to navigate, like a burned out building or the rubble of a collapsed bridge. But often, entrances to and passageways through these environments are quite small -- holes and cracks measuring just a few inches wide.

Engineers at the University of Zurich have developed a foldable drone that can shrink itself to fit through small holes. The technology could help drones navigate tight confines during search and rescue missions in the wake of a disaster.

Inspired by birds, which can fold their wings mid-flight, Swiss engineers built a drone that can fold its arms in order to fly through small spaces without sacrificing aerial stability. Researchers described their new technology in the journal IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters.

"Our solution is quite simple from a mechanical point of view, but it is very versatile and very autonomous, with onboard perception and control systems," Zurich researcher Davide Falanga said in a news release.

All four of the quadrotor's arms are foldable, and each boasts independently rotating propellers. All four arms can fold in different directions, allowing the drone to take on a variety of shapes.

All the foldability would be for not if it wasn't for the drone's novel control system. As the arms fold in different directions, the drone's center of gravity shifts, complicating its ability to maintain a stable flight. However, the drone's central control system can adjust the speed of each rotor to account for the gravitational shift, helping the drone keep its balance.

"The morphing drone can adopt different configurations according to what is needed in the field," said Stefano Mintchev, researcher at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology.

Currently, the drone's arms can only move in two dimensions, but researchers hope to improve the technology by allowing for 3D foldability. Researchers also plan to develop algorithms that allow the drone to decide in realtime which folded shape will work best for the contours of the entrance or passageway.

"The final goal is to give the drone a high-level instruction such as 'enter that building, inspect every room and come back' and let it figure out by itself how to do it," said Falanga.

*-- NASA contemplates 'tunnelbot' to explore ocean on Jupiter's moon Europa --*

NASA wants to explore Europa's ocean, but the Jovian moon's underwater world is protected by a thick layer of ice. To pierce through the icy crust, one group of scientists wants to use a nuclear-powered "tunnelbot."

Europa's subsurface ocean is one of the top targets in the search for alien life. Researchers think the ocean boasts the ingredients necessary to support microbial communities. But the only way to know for sure is to go there.

But even if NASA can safely deliver a probe to the surface of Jupiter's icy moon, they'd need a spacecraft capable of burrowing through miles of ice.

As part of a concept study, scientists and engineers with NASA's Glenn Research COMPASS team dreamed up a solution to the problem. They presented their idea at a recent American Geophysical Union meeting.

"We didn't worry about how our tunnelbot would make it to Europa or get deployed into the ice," Andrew Dombard, associate professor of earth and environmental sciences at the University of Illinois at Chicago, said in a news release. "We just assumed it could get there and we focused on how it would work during descent to the ocean."

Researchers conceived two versions of the probe, one powered by a small nuclear reactor and another fueled by General Purpose Heat Source bricks, radioactive heat source modules tailored for space missions. Heat from both energy sources would assist in melting the ice.

The probe developed by Dombard and his colleagues would be able to tunnel through Europa's ice -- which has a thickness ranging from 1.2 to 18.6 miles -- and carry instruments designed to test the subsurface ocean for evidence of microbial life. Along the way, the tunnelbot could sample and study the ice itself, as well as lakes found within the icy layers. Fiber optic cables would allow the probe to communicate with crafts on the surface.

NASA may not need to wait for a tunnel bot to test Europa's ocean water. Observations by NASA's Cassini spacecraft and the Hubble Space Telescope suggest ocean spray is routinely ejected high into space from fissures in Europa's icy shell. The next visitor to the Jovian moon could sample the ocean spray during a series of flybys.

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