Nimble Robotics was founded by former Stanford Ph.D. The funding will speed up the company’s hiring plans, scaling of robot deployment, and further product development. For mediaĪ set of high-resolution photos and raw videos of the DelFly Nimble, released under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license, can be downloaded here: photos, videos.Nimble Robotics, a warehouse automation company, has raised $50 million in its Series A funding led by DNS Capital and GSR Ventures. de Croon : A tailless aerial robotic flapper reveals that flies use torque coupling in rapid banked turns. At the same time, the high agility, combined with the programmability of the robot, opens up a new way of studying insect flight dynamics and control during high agility maneuvers, such as rapid banked turns observed in fruit-flies when evading predators. ![]() The so far unmatched combination of performances makes the lightweight (and thus inherently safe) natural-looking robot ready for many real-world tasks. Due to the lack of a tail, which provided passive stability in the previous designs, the robot relies on active stabilization, enabled by the onboard autopilot (STM32 microcontroller, MPU6000 6DOF IMU) and Paparazzi UAV software. Finally, yawing is achieved by actuating the roots of the left and right wing pairs such that their respective wingbeat-average thrust forces are tilted in opposite directions, creating torque around the yaw axis. Pitch torque is produced by adjusting the dihedral angle (central line of the flapping wings), which shifts the wingbeat-average thrust vectors of the two wing pairs forward or backward, with respect to the center of mass. Rolling is achieved by driving the two wing pairs at different flapping frequencies, which results in a thrust difference creating the torque around the roll axis. These are complemented with two rotary servo actuators, one adjusting the dihedral angle by changing the relative orientation of the two flapping mechanisms, and the other actuating the tips of the left and right wing-pair roots. To this end, the robot is equipped with two, independent, flapping mechanisms, one for each wing pair on the sides of the robot. To control the body orientation (attitude), the robot needs to be able to produce torques around the three orthogonal body axes. Like in quadrotors or helicopters, but also like in insects, forward/backward and sideways flight is achieved by pitching and rolling the robot’s body into the respective direction. ![]() At full throttle, the robot reaches a top speed of 7 m/s (~25 km/h). a camera system with a live video feed, additional sensors, etc.). The exceptional agility can be demonstrated by 360-degree flips around the pitch or roll axes or rapid transitions from hover to forward or sideways flight, and vice versa. The robot has a thrust-to-weight ratio of more than 1.3 and is capable of carrying an additional payload of up to 4 grams (e.g. ![]() This is thanks to design optimizations carried out with its tailed predecessor, the DelFly II, from which the flapping mechanism and wings were inherited. 3 m/s (~11 km/h) and enables a flight range of more than 1 kilometer. Its outstanding power efficiency peaks at a forward cruise speed of approx. At hover, the 29-g and 33-cm wingspan robot can fly for more than 5 minutes on a fully charged battery, while its 14 cm wings flap at a frequency of approx.
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