Dolphins play with robotic seaplane

updated 7:13 p.m. ET Jan. 4, 2008

It's a bird, it's a plane — no, it's the Flying Fish, a new unmanned seaplane developed at the University of Michigan that has demonstrated the ability to take off, fly and land autonomously in moderate seas some 6 feet high.

Researchers at U-M's Aerospace Engineering Department and its Marine Hydrodynamics Laboratories who designed and built the new unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), which they named the Flying Fish, think it is the first UAV that can take off and land on water all by itself.

The electrically powered Flying Fish was able to take off, fly and land autonomously 22 times during two days of sea trials held late last year off the coast of Monterey, Calif.

It also became probably the world's most unusual dolphin toy. Remarkably, when the UAV was landing in the sea, scientists on the research vessel John Martin monitoring the tests saw dolphins swim over to investigate.

To the researchers, it appeared that the dolphins thought the UAV was a pelican diving for fish, said Ella Atkins, a researcher from U-M's Aerospace Engineering Department.

Finding the craft wasn't a bird that had spotted tasty fish swimming below, the pod of three dolphins began playing with it, repeatedly swimming in formation with the little seaplane and diving underneath on one side to surface again on the other.

Seabird-sized
It's not surprising the playful dolphins initially were fooled. The Flying Fish is about the size and weight of a large seabird.

"We studied seabirds seriously," said Guy Meadows, director of the U-M Hydrodynamics Laboratories. He had the idea for the unmanned seaplane while watching flying fish pop up from the sea, soar over the waves, and drop down again.

Seabirds are "all about the same size — about 20 pounds with a 2-meter wingspan," said Meadows. "It turns out that, aerodynamically speaking, that's a sweet spot to be flying close to the water. Our plane is about the size of a large pelican."

That didn’t mean the Flying Fish was shaped like a seabird. "It had a seaplane shape with dual pontoons," said Atkins.

The UAV's body and catamaran-like twin pontoons make use of Meadows' speedboat-hull-design experience to direct sea spray away from its wings and help the craft "get up" quickly on the water when it begins its take-off run, she explained.

U-M's Flying Fish isn't the first unmanned seaplane. That honor probably belongs to the 300-pound Sea Scout, developed by Oregon Iron Works. But the Oregon Iron Works UAV doesn’t appear yet to have demonstrated the ability to take off autonomously on water.

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