Admit it. You’d get through boring classes in school by daydreaming of cool things you’d like to build. If you were like us, some of them were practical, but some of them were flights of fancy. Did you ever think of an airplane that could dive under the water? We did. So did some students at Aalborg University. The difference is they built theirs. Watch it do its thing in the video below.
As far as we can tell, the drone utilizes variable-pitch props to generate lift in the air and downward thrust in water. In addition to the direction of the thrust, water operations require a lower pitch to minimize drag. We’d be interested in seeing how it is all waterproofed, and we’re unsure how deep the device can go. No word on battery life either. From the video, we aren’t sure how maneuverable it is while submerged, but it does seem to have some control. It wouldn’t be hard to add a lateral thruster to improve underwater operations.
This isn’t the first vehicle of its kind (discounting fictional versions). Researchers at Rutgers created something similar in 2015, and we’ve seen other demonstrations, but this is still very well done, especially for a student project.
We did see a submersible drone built using parts from a flying drone. Cool, but not quite the same.
Kind of cool, but unlike a diving seabird, which can adapt it’s means of propulsion more drastically, this is a quadcopter drone that’s neither optimized for air or water. Cool vario-pitch though.
Don’t know why, but it reminds me of the internal combution engine drone (the one with chains between the engine and the propellers). Perhaps another branch on the evolution of man eating drones.