University engineers have figured out how to build an 'invisible' drone — here's the science behind…
- Prototype drone spins its entire body up to 25 times per second to blur itself into near-invisibility
- Phantom Twist's single motor spins the whole airframe in one direction and its propeller in the other
- AI design pipeline tested 20,000 possible layouts to find the optimal configuration
Drones have a visibility problem. Whether they're filming guests at a wedding or hunting for candid shots of nesting birds, the moment a drone is noticed, it can change the behavior of whatever it's observing — wildlife scatters, people act differently, and you end up with iffy results.
A team of engineers at Illinois' Northwestern University may have found a way around that, and it has nothing to do with camouflage. Their prototype drone, dubbed "Phantom Twist," doesn't try to look like its surroundings. Instead, it spins itself into a blur so fast that the human eye simply can't keep up.
The...
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