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Festo’s BionicSwift: New Impulses for Factory and Process Automation

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The BionicSwifts are agile, maneuverable, and can even fly loops and steep turn

In everyday factory operations, automation technology performs typical tasks such as gripping, moving and positioning goods, and controlling and regulating processes. Nature solves all these tasks naturally, simply, and energy efficiently. What could be more logical than to examine these natural phenomena and learn from them? This is why in 2006 Festo set up an international research network linking Festo to well-known universities, institutes, development companies, and private inventors: the Bionic Learning Network.

The BionicSwifts are agile, maneuverable, and can even fly loops and steep turns. By interacting with a radio-based indoor GPS system, the five robotic birds are capable of moving autonomously in a coordinated pattern in a defined airspace.

Festo's bionicswift: New Impulses for Factory and Process Automation

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Festo

BionicSwift

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BionicBee: Autonomous Flying in a Swarm

For more than 15 years, the Bionic Learning Network has been focusing on the fascination of flying. In addition to the technical decoding of bird flight, the team has researched and technologically implemented numerous other flying objects and their natural principles. With the BionicBee, the Bionic Learning Network has now for the first time developed a flying object that can fly in large numbers and completely autonomously in a swarm. The BionicBee will present its first flight show at the Hannover Messe 2024.

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