Despite the advancement in drone technology, the standard quadcopter comes with its own limitations. UAVs can fly in various directions. Their flying angles remain same and all of them move about in fixed rotor position. The Voliro drone is not the same, it is the first drone to have tiltable rotors which means that not only the propellers move but the rotor heads tilt in various angles which also give the Voliro acute angles to fly. The Voliro can fly upside-down, horizontally or vertically faced. It can adapt to almost any kind of angular displacement.
The Voliro is developed by students from the ETH university in Zurich, Switzerland. This drone was developed as part of a project by a senior Ph.D. candidate, Mina Kamel and his team. Due to Voliro’s omnidirectional capability, it can adapt to the orientation of 3D-structures and interact with it. This allows conducting physical interaction with the environment in a safe and reliable manner.
The practical aspects of the Voliro are unlimited. It can prove as a great tool for the inspection of assets in the oil and gas industry and also in the field of civil engineering. However, inspection always requires the placement of sensors in contact with the structure to gather information about material thickness and internal structural integrity. There is a large and growing demand for Non-Destructive Testing (NDT). This is currently performed by rope access teams or by building scaffoldings. Voliro offers a system that can perform both visual and contact-based inspection in one run. Reducing greatly the time and costs needed for inspection tasks.
Apart from inspection purposes, Voliro can also perform painting and coating jobs of large surfaces which requires strenuous human effort and the need for tremendous safety measures as such work demands working in obscure angles, heights and long duration. Voliro can easily perform such tasks using its flexible orientation. There are several other industry usages of the Voliro. Its functionality makes it so versatile in almost any task thrown at it.
Have a glance at the fascinating drone which can fly at any orientation:
