Delft University researchers develop whisker-based navigation for tiny drones

Researchers at Delft University of Technology have developed a bio-inspired navigation system for tiny drones that uses artificial whiskers to fly in environments where cameras, LiDAR, and GPS fail. Inspired by the vibrissae of rodents like rats and mice, the system allows drones weighing less than 100 grams to navigate through complete darkness, smoke, or dust by relying on tactile feedback.

The hardware consists of two 200mm Nitinol whiskers equipped with miniature barometric pressure sensors at their base. When a whisker contacts a surface, the sensors detect pressure changes, allowing the drone to estimate its position and depth in three dimensions with a mean error of approximately 9.18 millimeters. The entire tactile sensing and navigation pipeline is processed onboard a microcontroller, utilizing a highly efficient software implementation that requires only 34 KB of memory for the processing chain.

This technology enables sub-50-gram drones to follow contours, avoid obstacles, and build tactile maps of enclosed spaces. The research, published in Nature Communications, suggests significant potential for search and rescue operations in hazardous or visually ambiguous environments such as collapsed buildings or underground tunnels.