Researchers at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology have been doing some remarkable work when it comes to innovation in flying robots.
This time from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL), researchers at the Laboratory of Intelligent Systems have come up with an innovative concept of a flying platform that can not only fly but even crawl on the ground. The backronym 'DALER' stands for "Deployable Air Land Exploration Robot". Its actually named after the man behind the Project 'Ludovic Daler' a Ph.D candidate.
The project goes by the title 'Adaptive Morphology for Multi-Modal Locomotion' and is aimed at developing robots capable of multiple modes of locomotion. For task such as exploration, search-and-rescue, or monitoring of the environment autonomous or remotely operated robots are the obvious choice. But for these kind of tasks robots may have to deal with complex terrains, such as semi-collapsed buildings, deep caverns, or forests with a lot of vegetation. In general, flying robots are considered most capable for the purpose. However for exploring areas close to the ground it is found that ground locomotion is more efficient than flying. Hence a robot with both capabilities is suited for the purpose.