Nanodrone Fluid Propulsion

October 16, 2020

DarkCyber has been nosing around the technologies used in drones. Most attention seems to be directed at unmanned aerial systems. However, drones which operate in water are an important research area for a number of use cases; for example, targeted delivery of pathogens.

What Tiny Surfing Robots Teach Us About Surface Tension” contains a number of interesting factoids. However, the passage which captured the attention of a DarkCyber researcher was:

That knowledge has led Masoud [the Michigan professor]  to continue analyzing the propulsion behavior of diminutive robots — only several microns in size — and the Marangoni effect, which is the transfer of mass and momentum due to a gradient of surface tension at the interface between two fluids. In addition to serving as an explanation for tears of wine, the Marangoni effect helps circuit manufacturers dry silicon wafers and can be applied to grow nanotubes in ordered arrays.

The research also suggests was to use swarms of micro-sized drones to operate in swarms. Maybe targeted pathogen delivery?

Stephen E Arnold, October 16, 2020

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