Robotic Samara: Single winged helicopter

Nature has always been a great inspiration when it comes to designing and developing new mechanical devices.  With the advent of the UAV age, flying machines are getting smaller in size. When it comes to hovering UAVs like mini-scaled helicopters the problem with them is the smaller they get the less efficient they become. So to solve this problem Evan Ulrich and colleagues at the University of Maryland in College Park turned to the biological world for inspiration. Many trees disperse their seeds by releasing those single-winged seeds that are also called "Samara". Evan Ulrich and colleagues built a mechanical Samara also know as Ulrich flyer whose dynamics are very similar to those of nature's Samaras.