Chinese researchers develop amphibious ‘flying fish’ drone

Dubbed TJ-FlyingFish, the aerial-aquatic quadrotor weighs 1.63 kg with a wheelbase of 380 mm.

It adopts special designs in the propulsion and thruster configuration to cope with different fluid properties of water and air, making it capable of hovering in the air for six minutes or swimming underwater for about 40 minutes.

“For propulsion, the operating range is switched for the different mediums by the dual-speed propulsion unit, providing sufficient thrust and also ensuring output efficiency. For thruster configuration, thrust vectoring is realized by the rotation of the propulsion unit around the mount arm, thus enhancing the underwater maneuverability,” said the researchers.

The quadrotor is equipped with a cross-domain positioning and navigation system consisting of GPS, inertial measurement unit, depthmeter and mini Doppler velocity log, which enables autonomous control during its amphibious journey.

TJ-FlyingFish was jointly developed by a team of scientists from the Shanghai Research Institute for Intelligent Autonomous Systems under the Tongji University and the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

Possible applications include resource exploration, search and rescue missions, and engineering inspections.