{"id":24074,"date":"2026-10-15T07:03:13","date_gmt":"2026-10-15T07:03:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news678.top\/?p=24074"},"modified":"2026-10-15T07:03:13","modified_gmt":"2026-10-15T07:03:13","slug":"bio-inspired-whiskers-enable-tiny-flying-drones-to-navigate-and-explore-total-darkness-by-touch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news678.top\/?p=24074","title":{"rendered":"Bio-Inspired Whiskers Enable Tiny Flying Drones to Navigate and Explore Total Darkness by Touch"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<div>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/images.techeblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/14230432\/bio-inspired-whiskers-tiny-drones-touch.jpg\" alt=\"Bio-Inspired Whiskers Tiny Drones Touch\" width=\"960\" height=\"640\"\/><br \/>Rats and mice move through pitch-black burrows and narrow tunnels by brushing long, sensitive whiskers against nearby surfaces. Those same whiskers detect contact forces with almost no pressure, letting the animals build a mental map of walls, corners and openings without ever relying on sight. Researchers at Delft University of Technology have now translated that approach to a palm-sized flying robot, mounting a pair of artificial whiskers on a Crazyflie drone that weighs roughly 44 grams once the sensors are added.<\/p>\n<p><span id=\"more-261504\"\/><br \/><iframe title=\"Tiny Drones That Sense the World Through Touch\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/DGJ1w1cdV3s?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><noscript><iframe title=\"Tiny Drones That Sense the World Through Touch\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/DGJ1w1cdV3s?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/noscript><br \/>\nEach whisker is a 200-millimeter length of nitinol wire that is only 0.4 millimeters thick, or about the breadth of four sheets of paper stacked together. Each whisker\u2019s base has three small barometric pressure sensors. As the flexible shaft bends against a surface, the sensors detect the associated pressure change in less than 2 milliseconds. The onboard software then uses that data to obtain an accurate depth reading to within a few millimeters, while the filtering procedure eliminates unstable readings caused by the drone\u2019s own propellers. The entire tactile system works on a small STM32 microcontroller with only 34 kilobytes of memory.<\/p>\n<p>In flight tests conducted in complete darkness, the drone was able to follow the contours of walls and soft fabric surfaces without colliding. It maintained a consistent distance, turned bends, and even continued along new shapes after making contact. In closed areas, the same wall-following behavior allowed the robot to create a tactile map of the location and find an exit entirely on its own. Even transparent acrylic and glass panels that would mislead cameras or lasers were readily visible since the technology does not rely on reflected light.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/images.techeblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/14230423\/bio-inspired-whiskers-tiny-drones-touch-1.jpg\" alt=\"Bio-Inspired Whiskers Tiny Drones Touch\" width=\"1280\" height=\"1280\"\/><br \/>The whiskers are all pointing forward and only begin to register a reading when they come into contact with an object, so the robot still requires some space and mobility to react. Anything slightly out of the whiskers\u2019 reach, such as sideways impediments beyond the range of the two wires, remains undetectable until the drone runs into it. Nonetheless, this strategy works well in the kind of tight, low-visibility passageways that appear in search and rescue scenarios when there is smoke, dust, or utter darkness, areas where cameras and rangefinders would simply be too large or unreliable for a sub-100 gram drone.<\/p>\n<p>Chaoxiang Ye, Salua Hamaza, and Guido de Croon published their findings in Nature Communications in September 2026. Their findings reveal that with a few of 3.2 gram whiskers and a few dozen kilobytes of code, a tiny drone can sense and traverse tight environments even when it lacks vision.<br \/><span>[Source]<\/span><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p> Bio-Inspired Whiskers Enable Tiny Flying Drones to Navigate and Explore Total Darkness by Touch<br \/>\n<br \/>#BioInspired #Whiskers #Enable #Tiny #Flying #Drones #Navigate #Explore #Total #Darkness #Touch<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Rats and mice move through pitch-black burrows and narrow tunnels by brushing long, sensitive whiskers&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":24075,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[14680,14683,1756,14682,4758,3819,9956,1639,2170,2056,14681],"class_list":["post-24074","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tech","tag-bioinspired","tag-darkness","tag-drones","tag-enable","tag-explore","tag-flying","tag-navigate","tag-tiny","tag-total","tag-touch","tag-whiskers"],"featured_image_urls":{"full":["https:\/\/news678.top\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/bio-inspired-whiskers-tiny-drones-touch.jpg",960,640,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/news678.top\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/bio-inspired-whiskers-tiny-drones-touch-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/news678.top\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/bio-inspired-whiskers-tiny-drones-touch-300x200.jpg",300,200,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/news678.top\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/bio-inspired-whiskers-tiny-drones-touch-768x512.jpg",640,427,true],"large":["https:\/\/news678.top\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/bio-inspired-whiskers-tiny-drones-touch.jpg",640,427,false],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/news678.top\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/bio-inspired-whiskers-tiny-drones-touch.jpg",960,640,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/news678.top\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/bio-inspired-whiskers-tiny-drones-touch.jpg",960,640,false],"covernews-featured":["https:\/\/news678.top\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/bio-inspired-whiskers-tiny-drones-touch.jpg",960,640,false],"covernews-medium":["https:\/\/news678.top\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/bio-inspired-whiskers-tiny-drones-touch-540x340.jpg",540,340,true]},"author_info":{"display_name":"admin","author_link":"https:\/\/news678.top\/?author=1"},"category_info":"<a href=\"https:\/\/news678.top\/?cat=8\" rel=\"category\">Tech<\/a>","tag_info":"Tech","comment_count":"0","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news678.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24074","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news678.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news678.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news678.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news678.top\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=24074"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/news678.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24074\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news678.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/24075"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news678.top\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=24074"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news678.top\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=24074"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news678.top\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=24074"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}