We are aware of the amphibious vehicles that can operate on land and in water. But we have not seen something capable of traveling between air and water in the blink of an eye.
Now a research team at the Chinese University of Hong Kong has shown that it’s not impossible to do.
The research team has created a prototype device called Mirs-X. It is a quadcopter that flies like a drone and can splash down into the water to swim like a fish.
The Mirs-X prototype is pretty small in size, it weighs 3.5 pounds (1.6 kg) and measures just 15 inches. It can hover for about six minutes in the air or can dive and stay underwater for 40 minutes at depths up to three meters. It moves at up to 2 meters per second in water.
To achieve this ground-breaking innovation, researchers equipped each motor with a dual-speed gearbox and rotating mounts to enable the drone to maneuver in two separate biomes.
The team is working on increasing the prototype size to around 6 feet. The future model might also be able to carry and grasp underwater objects.
Such a revolutionary drone could prove hugely useful for search and rescue operations, exploration, surveillance, scientific research, and many more possibilities.
