Demonstrated at the just-held Hannover Fair in Germany, the three machines use their flippers to fly their way around, while being monitored by ultrasonic transmitting stations. They use XBee, based on ZigBee to transmit data by 2.4 GHz radio. The penguins recognise each other on the basis of their distances to the transmitting stations. The AirPenguins are able to fly in a group without colliding, while also maintaining height control and positional stability. As an alternative, they can act synchronously in a group. The company believes that autonomous, versatile, adaptive self regulating processes will acquire increasing significance in the future for automation in production. Much can be learned about this by studying the animal kingdom.
Robotic penguins fly for automation research
Festo has developed a group of three mechanical penguins, that, unlike their real world counterparts, can fly around as part of a research project into autonomous, collaborative robotics.
