Spiraling Flight of Maple Tree Seeds Inspires New Surveillance Technology

Clark School Aerospace Engineering Students Solve 60-Year-Old Design Dilemma

SPECIAL DEMONSTRATION

10 a.m. to noon, Tuesday, October 20

Kim Building Plaza (http://www.eng.umd.edu/visitus/visitus_directions.html)

*media please call ahead*

COLLEGE PARK, Md., Oct. 19 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Maple tree seeds (or
samara fruit) and the spiraling pattern in which they glide to the ground have
delighted children for ages and perplexed engineers for decades. Now aerospace
engineering graduate students at the University of Maryland's Clark School of
Engineering have learned how to apply the seeds' unique design to devices that
can hover and perform surveillance in defense and emergency situations.

In the 1950s, researchers first tried to create an unmanned aerial vehicle
that could mimic a maple seed's spiraling fall. Ever since, their attempts
have been foiled by instability, resulting in a lack of control over the tiny
(less than one meter) vehicles, which were easily knocked off course by wind.
As recently as June 2009, this was considered as an open challenge for
engineers.

The Clark School students have solved the steering problem and provided a
solution that allows the device to take off from the ground and hover, as well
as perform controlled flight after its initial fall to the ground after being
deployed from an aircraft. The device can also begin to hover during its
initial descent, or after being launched by hand.

The students studied maple seeds and developed a new design incorporating the
natural flight of the tiny flyers. The insight gleaned from this study enabled
the creation of the world's smallest controllable single-winged rotorcraft.
The maple seed-inspired design is valuable because when dropped, unpowered,
from a plane and then controlled remotely, it can perform surveillance
maneuvers for defense, fire monitoring and search-and-rescue purposes.

"Natural maple seeds usually trade off altitude for rotation as they fall to
the ground," said Evan Ulrich, one of the graduate students on the team. This
altitude-rotation trade-off results in the power that the seeds need to
travel.

But this traditional design does not provide enough power to allow the device
to hover.

Ulrich and other graduate students in the research group led by Clark School
Dean Darryll Pines (Professor, Department of Aerospace Engineering)
incorporated a new part to their device, a curved, comma-shaped component in
the body of the device, which provides more stability and gives the device
power to hover. They have two patents pending on their innovation.

Part of the solution to controlling flight was to physically separate the
problem of propulsion and stability. The wing of the vehicle is designed to
function in the same way as natural samara and performs a stable autorotation
during descent. The propulsive section of the vehicle functions like the tail
rotor on a helicopter, though instead of preventing rotation (as in the case
of a helicopter), it maintains rotation (to allow it to hover).

The Clark School researchers made use of research and testing techniques
developed at the school's Alfred Gessow Rotorcraft Center to develop the maple
seed-inspired device. The aerodynamic and geometric properties of natural
samara were studied in detail. The insight gleaned from this study enabled the
creation of the world's smallest controllable single-winged rotorcraft.

The vehicle has been demonstrated at University of Maryland events, the
American Helicopter Society Annual Forum, the Smithsonian Udvar-Hazy Air and
Space Museum, and at the 100th anniversary of the College Park airport.

NOTE TO EDITORS: links to video and high-res images are available with the
online version of this release:
http://www.eng.umd.edu/media/pressreleases/pr101909_mapleseed.html

More Information:
Project Web Site: http://www.avl.umd.edu/projects/proj9-robotic-samara.html
Office of Technology Commercialization project patent information:
http://www.otc.umd.edu/umotc/Technology.php?recid=3623

Additional Upcoming Event:
Evan Ulrich will be demonstrating the flyer at:
Air and Scare
National Air and Space Museum, Udvar-Hazy Center
Oct. 24 from 2-8 p.m.
http://www.nasm.si.edu/airandscare/activites.htm

About the A. James Clark School of Engineering
The Clark School of Engineering, situated on the rolling, 1,500-acre
University of Maryland campus in College Park, Md., is one of the premier
engineering schools in the U.S.

The Clark School's graduate programs are collectively the fastest rising in
the nation. In U.S. News & World Report's annual rating of graduate programs,
the school is 17th among public and private programs nationally, 9th among
public programs nationally and first among public programs in the mid-Atlantic
region. The School offers 13 graduate programs and 12 undergraduate programs,
including degree and certification programs tailored for working
professionals.

The school is home to one of the most vibrant research programs in the
country. With major emphasis in key areas such as communications and
networking, nanotechnology, bioengineering, reliability engineering, project
management, intelligent transportation systems and space robotics, as well as
electronic packaging and smart small systems and materials, the Clark School
is leading the way toward the next generations of engineering advances.

Visit the Clark School homepage at www.eng.umd.edu.

SOURCE A. James Clark School of Engineering

Missy Corley of the A. James Clark School of Engineering, +1-301-405-6501,
cell: +1-804-398-8652, mcorley@umd.edu