Bio-Inspired Drones

Dear Colleagues,

Thanks to rapid technological advances, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) or drones can now be small and relatively inexpensive to build and use. Therefore, they allow for vast freedom in exploring novel designs and applications that could not be conceived or achieved on manned aircraft and have consequently become highly attractive to the commercial and research sectors. A vast range of UAV applications are currently being explored, ranging from aerial photography and package delivery all the way to crop inspection, fire-fighting, and search and rescue. The ever-growing range of potential UAV applications calls for new capabilities that often cannot be met with conventional solutions based on manned aircraft. Specific applications can require novel abilities, such as effective interaction with the environment, landing on vertical surfaces or exploring unknown and dynamically changing environments. The over-arching challenges in the field include the design and manufacturing of small-scale UAVs that can achieve a sufficient flight time, carry a useful payload, and perform complex tasks autonomously. Solutions need to be developed for swarming, collision avoidance and mitigation, integration with manned air traffic, handling adverse weather, navigation in complex dynamic environments, exploring cluttered indoor spaces, etc.
A rich source of inspiration to tackle the aforementioned challenges is provided by nature. Thanks to millions of years of evolution, nature showcases elaborate and effective solutions for many complex tasks, including locomotion, sensing, control and navigation. Flying animals, for instance, are typically adept at hovering, rapid forward flight, complex rapid manoeuvring, high-precision navigation, robust control, and multimodal mobility. In aerial robotics, bio-inspired solutions are thus becoming widespread, with examples including flapping-wing flight mechanisms, bird-inspired perching, insect-inspired visual navigation, and bat-inspired echolocation. Bio-inspiration can both allow for entirely new capabilities and lead to novel solutions to existing challenges.
This Special Issue invites submissions addressing the development of novel, bio-inspired UAVs/drones, including but not limited to: The development and investigation of new robotic platform designs, soft robotics and novel materials, adaptive and morphing design, bio-inspired control, multisensory navigation, obstacle avoidance, environment interaction and perching, machine learning applications, experimental methods and testing, datasets, demonstration of new applications, as well as the use of bio-inspired robots to better understand biological systems.

Dr. Mirko Kovac
Dr. Sophie Armanini
Dr. Abdessattar Abdelkefi
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Drones is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.