S-MAD Drone Can Land and Perch On Vertical Walls Like a Bird

Last week, researchers of the University of Sherbrooke presented the Sherbrook Multimodal Autonomous Drone (S-MAD) at the Living Machine 2017 conference at Stanford University, where it won the "Best Robotics Paper Award." According to NewAtlas, the Createk Design Lab and Sherbrooke researchers looked to birds and their last-minute perching instincts and abilities and infused those into their unmanned aerial vehicle. Not only that, but the company went with a fixed-wing approach--again, hewing closer to a bird's anatomy as opposed to the typical rotor-based drone design. Makes sense, as the Living Machine conference is all about the symbiotic relationship between nature and machinery, rewarding those companies most creative and effective in their designs. The Sherbrooke researchers apparently tested thousands of aerodynamic model simulations in order to perfect the design's flight and perching capabilities, before actually succeeding in developing a capable fixed-wing drone with the proper thrust and pitch required to pull the aforementioned behavior off correctly.