Tiny drone uses nitinol whiskers to navigate by touch in the dark

Researchers at Delft University of Technology built a tactile sensor for drones from 3.2-gram, 200-mm artificial whiskers made of nitinol shape-memory wire. The system detects contact in under 2 milliseconds with millimeter precision, running its entire perception pipeline on just 34 kilobytes of memory.

• Two nitinol whiskers weighing 3.2 g and measuring 200 mm sit at the drone's front
• Three miniature barometric sensors at each whisker base detect bending in under 2 ms
• Onboard processing needs only 34 KB of memory
• The drone builds tactile maps and finds exits without cameras or LiDAR