{"id":240214,"date":"2026-07-03T03:19:48","date_gmt":"2026-07-03T08:19:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/07\/giving-drones-a-sense-of-pain-could-help-them-predict-instability-before-it-happens"},"modified":"2026-07-03T03:19:48","modified_gmt":"2026-07-03T08:19:48","slug":"giving-drones-a-sense-of-pain-could-help-them-predict-instability-before-it-happens","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/07\/giving-drones-a-sense-of-pain-could-help-them-predict-instability-before-it-happens","title":{"rendered":"Giving drones a sense of \u2018pain\u2019 could help them predict instability before it happens"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/giving-drones-a-sense-of-pain-could-help-them-predict-instability-before-it-happens2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Imagine you\u2019re running and you sprain your ankle. The pain makes you gingerly limp the rest of the way home. This is a great example of how nature adapts to failures in a system. The pain tells you: \u201cIf you continue running like normal, the injury will only get worse.\u201d So you naturally adjust the way you run. Drones currently cannot do this with a worn-out propeller.<\/p>\n<p>Researchers from Delft University of Technology and Wageningen University &amp; Research have now demonstrated that a concept we learned from nature, which was originally developed to predict collapse in ecosystems, can also help detect when engineered systems are heading toward failure. This is crucial for ensuring drone and autonomous vehicle safety as they increasingly become part of everyday life.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou can compare our approach to the way humans experience pain. After an injury, pain provides immediate feedback about our condition and helps us judge what actions remain safe,\u201d says Jasper van Beers, a researcher at Delft University of Technology. \u201cMachines generally lack this form of self-awareness. The new indicators, derived from real-time measurement data, offer a first step toward giving engineered systems a similar ability to recognize when they are approaching their limits.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Imagine you\u2019re running and you sprain your ankle. The pain makes you gingerly limp the rest of the way home. This is a great example of how nature adapts to failures in a system. The pain tells you: \u201cIf you continue running like normal, the injury will only get worse.\u201d So you naturally adjust the [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1488,15,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-240214","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-drones","category-habitats","category-robotics-ai"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240214","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=240214"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240214\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=240214"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=240214"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=240214"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}