The ability of birds to grasp onto branches of almost any size, shape, and texture should not be taken for granted. It was this ability that fascinated teams of Stanford University engineers who had previously developed technologies inspired by animal abilities.
“It’s not easy to mimic how birds fly and perch,” said Dr William Roderick, who was a PhD student at Stanford. “After millions of years of evolution, they make take-off and landing look so easy, even among all of the complexity and variability of the tree branches you would find in a forest.”
However, years of study on biomimetic robots in Stanford labs has enabled the construction of a perching robot. When attached to a quadcopter drone, this “stereotyped nature-inspired aerial grasper” (SNAG) forms a flying, catching and carrying, perching robot. The researchers used their bird-like robot to compare bird toe arrangements and to measure microclimates in a remote Oregon forest.
In previous studies...