The 'butterflies' drones

Drones are here to stay and many companies are looking for new ways to take advantage of this technology. An example is the emotion of butterflies, created by the German company Festo, which groups together a set of small drones that are capable of navigating inside without colliding with each other. In addition to the surprising appearance of these mini robots, which are very similar to butterflies, the technology can help in the development of intelligent vehicles that do not collide, for example.

To fly in harmony, "butterflies" rely on a technology called eMotionSphere, which uses a set of ten cameras to identify the position of drones up to 160 times per second. This data is then transmitted to a central server, which calculates the routes of each of them individually to prevent them from hatching.

Each camera is programmed to focus on at least two drones, and beyond them, the server can also count on information from two infrared LEDs installed on each aircraft, which serve to identify their orientation.

Therefore, another advantage of this concept is that the final product is easy and quick to assemble. All necessary components are contained in the turn of the aircraft. The wings flap up to twice per second and the maximum speed is up to 2.5 meters per second. The total flight time of each robot is up to 4 minutes and after this period they need 15 minutes to recharge the batteries.

The project is a proof of concept for eMotionSphere, and there are no plans for it to be commercialized. Festo's long-term goal is to demonstrate that its system could be used to coordinate the largest and most specialized drones, which would be used for logistics tasks in industries. The project can also be an inspiration to avoid multi-vehicle accidents, such as such common accidents, for example. It would be a technology revolution.