This tiny drone can avoid obstacles but also navigate towards smells, just like a moth

Over the years, drones have proven their mettle in a variety of situations. Now, researchers at the University of Washington are interested in developing drones that can navigate certain situations—such as unsafe buildings affected by natural disasters or regions that have unexploded devices—by sniffing out chemicals in the air to locate disaster survivors, gas leaks, explosives and much more. A team led by UW researchers has developed the ‘Smellicopter’—a tiny autonomous drone that uses an actual live antenna from a moth to navigate toward smells. “By using an actual moth antenna with Smellicopter, we’re able to get the best of both worlds: the sensitivity of a biological organism on a robotic platform where we can control its motion,” said Melanie Anderson, a UW doctoral student in mechanical engineering and lead author of the study, which described the results of this research in the IOP Bioinspiration & Biomimetics journal recently. Technology-wise, the team added the antenna sensor to an open-source hand-held commercially available quadcopter drone platform that allows users to add customized features.