3 Horizontal propellers: vertical flying, climbing and descending Vertical propellers: horizontal flying, accelerating and braking Adaptive propellers with profile modification Just like the wings on the BionicOpter, the spheres’ propellers are made of a sturdy frame covered with a flexible membrane. The laser-sintered frame is twisted once, thus making a figure of eight. As the film is not under complete tension, it inflates on one side or the other, depending on which direction the propeller is turning. This creates a passive effect, which also occurs on the flapping wings of the artificial dragonfly. Identical thrust performance in both directions On each sphere there are eight of these adaptive propellers, which act as drives. They supply up to 42 g of thrust both forwards and backwards and are thus equally efficient in both directions. Until now, that has only been found in very few applications, for example in the heavy rudder propellers on ships. In flying objects, this efficient combination of equal thrust performance in two directions is even a genuine first. As the propellers weigh less than one gram, the direction can be changed almost without any delay. The eight drives are attached along the equator of the spheres, four of them aligned horizontally. They enable the spheres to fly, climb or descend quickly up and down. Thanks to the four vertical propellers, the spheres can move horizontally in all directions and rotate about their vertical axis. Precise steering and control Four of the propellers are screwed anticlockwise and the other four clockwise, with an anticlockwise drive always being located opposite a clockwise one. In this way, the torques are neutralised and the spheres can be steered in any spatial direction to an accuracy of one centimetre. The spheres themselves are controlled locally by the activation of the eight motors. The corresponding onboard electronics with 12 processors are installed in the spheres, as are the radio unit, the battery and four power LEDs, which light up to help the choreography in an optical manner. The four infrared markers used for communicating with the cameras are embedded in the shell, which is made of a PE/PP film. Pioneering role model: the BionicOpter wing principle transferred to the drive technology of the eMotionSpheres
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