Yahoo Finance British Army counts on animal-inspired drones on the battlefield
The British Army is testing a stork-inspired drone invented by a zoology professor to help on the front line.
It is counting on the autonomous paraglider to overcome the costly and dangerous challenge of sending supplies to soldiers on the battlefield.
Stork, the creation of Animal Dynamics, a robotics start-up spun out of Oxford University, was selected along with five other technology companies by the Defence, Science and Technology Laboratory.
The paraglider, which can carry up to 220lb over a distance of 60 miles, is designed to be a safer and less fuel intensive way of delivering supplies compared with helicopters. It will be tested out by soldiers during a four week exercise on Salisbury Plain in November, according to the Financial Times.
Each company has received £750,000 in funding for the test, and the Ministry of Defence will decide next year which system will be awarded a contract to eventually be used in action.
Animal Dynamics applies bio-mechanics to its technology and has previously created a small, dragonfly-shaped drone and a flapping propulsion vehicle for the seas, which takes inspiration from a whale's tail.
Other concepts selected for testing include a robot on tracks from Quinetiq, a fixed wing drone from Barnard Microsystems and a remote control driverless lorry named the Viking which will be built by Horiba Mira. The only non-British company in the lineup is Finnish Fleetonomy, which has created an autonomous quadcopter.
Defence chiefs announced the £3m pot for ideas last year in the hope they would secure a supplier who could offer Amazon-style delivery drones as a quicker and safer way to get materials to dangerous frontline combat zones.
The brief was to create an “autonomous last mile resupply system” with a £3m pot to find a solution that could move equipment across difficult terrain and bad weather and ideally, stray bullets or explosives.
The UK relies heavily on military drones and technology from American and Israeli suppliers. Last year the US army unveiled its aerial resupply solution: a hover bike.
