(upbeat music)
-: When I was a kid, I got lost at this park called Legoland.
And I was running around, I was really excited.
And luckily, I was found
but if it was a bigger park, such as Disney World,
that can be a pressing issue, a very scary issue.
So what if we were in a scary situation?
Let's say I'm military personnel
and I'm trying to find one of my friends
in a very hostile environment.
Sometimes it's not easy to just call the drone
and say, "Hey, we need to find this person."
I need something quick, quiet and stealthy
that's gonna be able to find somebody.
Or even something a little more relatable to Mississippi.
If I'm dealing with...
Let's say I'm a game warden
and I have a very large amount of land
and I'm renting it out to certain people who wanna hunt,
I need to make sure they're not doing this illegally
during certain parts of the year.
And so I need something that can not only locate my animals
and my people and my crops to make sure that no one's
going through and hunting them and picking my stuff around.
I need to also be able to detect the people
and find them without giving away my own location.
Current drones and UAV's can't really do that as effectively
and quad rotors are a little bit too noisy,
and they can be easily disturbed with gusts of wind.
But if you look into nature,
owls have mastered this capability to fly silently
and stealthily and still be able to maintain slow speeds.
And this is basically because of the leading-edge serrations
that are on the very front of the wing.
So this barn owl, as it glides over these feathers,
they're completely undisturbed.
And that's because as air flows over the serrations,
it creates a laminar separation bubble
and then down and from the back
and the velvet-like surface of the feathers
completely levels out all noise,
and it still can fly slowly.
My research is using the first order of proximation
to mimic the length, the tilt angle,
and the inclination angle of these serrations
and utilizing them in a 3D printing program.
Once these serrations are 3D printed,
they'll be mimicked and laid over into a silicone molding.
The silicone molding will then...
The silicone serrations will then be placed on
the very front of a wing, or UAV ring
that is also laid over
with some type of a velvet-like surface
that can mimic the skin roughness,
the surface roughness, if you will, of this actual owl.
After that, flight testing will be done to make sure
that it can look exactly, or fly just as efficiently
as a barn owl can.
Using this type of technology,
a barn owl will not only...
This barn owl inspired UAV
will not only be able to fly stealthily and quietly
while maintaining its same type of aerodynamic efficiency,
it can be able to utilize the help of a farmer,
trying to make sure no one's in his own area
or try to help military personnel in a hostile environment,
or just simply save that one kid who ran away
outside of Disney World, looking for Mickey Mouse.
Thank you.
(upbeat music)