Here’s a simple, flexible drone with one propeller that you can roll over

The Spectrum.ieee service gave us the opportunity to preview F-SAM in detail. It is nothing more than a simple, flexible drone with one propeller, which proves both that creating a flying robot is not difficult and that biomimicry costs nothing and is amazingly effective.

Engineers created the F-SAM. It is a flexible drone with one propeller, inspired to some extent by nature

The F-SAM as a flexible single propeller drone or monocopter was developed at Singapore University of Technology & Design. Its name is an acronym for words Foldable Single Actuator Monocopter, which clearly indicates its most important features, i.e. the possibility of folding, thanks to the flexible form and the presence of only one propeller. It is a simple piece of work, but it is precisely in this simplicity that part of the charm.

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This one propeller, however, provides full directional control, because while the usual increase / decrease of its rotation affects the height, proper pulsing allows you to set it in the desired direction. The whole thing consists of a custom-made controller, but apart from it, the rest of the elements are standard, cheap and available without any problems. This also applies to the tiny carbon fiber leg that keeps the propeller off the ground.

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Engineers also solved the problem of a possible failure, drawing inspiration from single-winged seed pods. Those ordered from maple trees rotate along their axis, which slows down the fall of seeds to the ground. As it is inherently a reliable and predictable mechanism, it is also an interesting feature for a drone that, in the event of a failure, will simply rotate until it lands.