Inspired by the natural world to address urgent operational challenges

This article originally appeared in the Jan'23 magazine issue of Electronic Specifier Design – see ES's Magazine Archives for more featured publications.

The company is striving to provide solutions to solve these challenges through a first principles approach. This means it often begins with a blank sheet of paper and comes up with the best solution without any preconceived or predefined direction.

Inspired by movement in nature

It begins with the challenge. Nature has had millions of years to hone its solutions, leaving plenty for humankind to learn and draw solutions from. Animal Dynamics is focusing on moving a lot of items from one place to another to help people, and it wants to do so more efficiently than current systems.

Animal Dynamics’ STORK is a platform of autonomous powered parafoil logistics vehicles, capable of carrying different amounts of payload, with STORK STM being the heavy lift autonomous logistics vehicle. Taking on a first principles approach, Ian Foster, Head of Engineering at Animal Dynamics explained: “We haven’t got a whole back catalogue of parts and components we’re trying to fit into any given solution.

One of the key ways we find the best solution when appropriate is to draw inspiration from the natural world.” Foster’s role at Animal Dynamics includes making sure the team of multidisciplined engineers have what they require to develop the system from the ground up, ensuring the product can go to market and make a difference as quickly as possible.

Looking at nature, storks tend to use a soaring gliding flight, helping them conserve energy. Simultaneously, they’re quite heavy birds with a wingspan between 2.2 and 2.9m, one of the largest of any land-dwelling bird. STORK can carry 135kg for 400km (the distance between London and Amsterdam), making it suitable for heavy loads and long ranges.

The parafoil wing on the STORK system develops excellent gliding characteristics with its wide wingspan. Essentially, this is a piece of fabric that can collapse down to be stowed for transport but is lightweight making it an efficient mechanism. “Nature provides the inspiration, and we use first principles engineering to home in on the way to apply that inspiration to a product,” continued Foster.

STORK STM is designed to address critical and hazardous operational challenges as reliably, consistently, and efficiently as possible. This includes providing humanitarian aid in crisis zones, improving emergency response strategies in inaccessible locations, enabling delivery in military settings, and developing sustainable agriculture solutions.

Setting new standards for UAS performance and safety

A lot of uncrewed aerial logistics missions currently only address one or two aspects of the challenge. They either carry a high load and perhaps have a short or vertical take-off but they can’t travel the distance. Or they can fly a long way but only with a low payload and only from a long runway.

Therefore, the missions they can be deployed on are limited. “We want to produce something that isn’t compromised and covers a wider spectrum of the challenge so it can be deployed to more places to make more of a difference,” stated Foster. The challenge is these factors conflict with each other.

If you put more payload on something it won’t travel as far. Normally, the way around higher payload is putting more engines on it, or more power. This then compromises other aspects. The aim of STORK is to operate from as many locations as possible, with many of them being remote and difficult to access. Therefore, STORK has a short take-off.