5 ms·

Considering the size of these, and their incredibly light weight design, that's probably a bit unlikely. With current technology, they are not capable of carry

Considering the size of these, and their incredibly light weight design, that's probably a bit unlikely. With current technology, they are not capable of carrying much of a payload. It's great research, and very cool design (both mechanically, as well as the driving software), but frankly, these types of flying mechanisms just don't scale well and don't have much use. (But please don't take that of a criticism of their research, I think what they've done is awesome and I really look forward to see what they do next.)

jacquesm 8y ago
We already know they scale quite well, your average duck goes 100 mph and will fly incredible distances on a relatively small load of fuel. It's just that we haven't been able to re-engineer them to the point that we can achieve that kind of efficiency, but we have solid proof it is possible. Scaling flapping wing devices up is much easier than making them this small.
- schoen 8y ago
  > your average duck goes 100 mph Apparently this was a record-setting duck; we wouldn't want to say "your average human goes 23 mph", even though Usain Bolt has done so.
  - alonmower 8y ago
    But if we can build a replica duck that matches the record-setting duck's performance we can create lots of copies of it
  - jacquesm 8y ago
    Ok, we'll swap the Duck with a Peregrine Falcon. Please take the 100 mph duck with an appropriate amount of salt (vegetarians, feel free to substitute (the duck, not the salt) with an equal amount of Tofu), and instead read it as 'birds are very fast'.
    - supermatt 8y ago
      That would be a dive, not flying. Humans can reach great speeds while falling too! :)
- hyperpallium 8y ago
  No more than insect eyes scale to bird eyes. The problem for wings is physics doesn't scale. e.g. 1 Consider animating falling, scaled at 1 pixel per km vs 1 pixel per meter. The former is much slower. e.g. 2 An ant can carry several times its own weight, but you can't.
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MrQuincle 8y ago
It doesn't scale well is a bit vague. Care to clarify? What doesn't scale and why doesn't it scale? My mechanical engineering skills are absent... - Is it that it cannot be miniaturized? However, very small insects seem to use flapping as well. - Is it this particular mechanical setup that won't scale? - Is it that vision cannot be miniaturized? - Is it energy density that is not high enough? - Is it material strength? - If the application goal is to for example land in a tree or circumvent all kind of tiny obstacles very fast, are there better mechanisms? I'm always really interested in miniaturization. From watches to chips. So if someone tells it won't work in a particular field, that's important to know.
- sgnelson 8y ago
  Scale way in the upwards direction. As you noted, it's great at small size. We can build ornithopters at the scale of this and bird sized devices, and they fly pretty well, but getting to man sized and airplane sized, would be quite difficult and inefficient. I'm sorry, but I'm too lazy to answer all of your questions at the moment, though they're good questions. But generally the answer to all of your questions is "yes." (with the exception of the last question, which is "I don't know", but if you've seen a hummingbird or dragon fly, you know exactly how insanely maneuverable they are, and I don't know if I've ever seen better. For more information, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ornithopter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ornithopter

jacquesm 8y ago

We already know they scale quite well, your average duck goes 100 mph and will fly incredible distances on a relatively small load of fuel. It's just that we haven't been able to re-engineer them to the point that we can achieve that kind of efficiency, but we have solid proof it is possible. Scaling flapping wing devices up is much easier than making them this small.

schoen 8y ago
> your average duck goes 100 mph Apparently this was a record-setting duck; we wouldn't want to say "your average human goes 23 mph", even though Usain Bolt has done so.
- alonmower 8y ago
  But if we can build a replica duck that matches the record-setting duck's performance we can create lots of copies of it
- jacquesm 8y ago
  Ok, we'll swap the Duck with a Peregrine Falcon. Please take the 100 mph duck with an appropriate amount of salt (vegetarians, feel free to substitute (the duck, not the salt) with an equal amount of Tofu), and instead read it as 'birds are very fast'.
  - supermatt 8y ago
    That would be a dive, not flying. Humans can reach great speeds while falling too! :)
hyperpallium 8y ago
No more than insect eyes scale to bird eyes. The problem for wings is physics doesn't scale. e.g. 1 Consider animating falling, scaled at 1 pixel per km vs 1 pixel per meter. The former is much slower. e.g. 2 An ant can carry several times its own weight, but you can't.

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MrQuincle 8y ago

It doesn't scale well is a bit vague. Care to clarify? What doesn't scale and why doesn't it scale? My mechanical engineering skills are absent... - Is it that it cannot be miniaturized? However, very small insects seem to use flapping as well. - Is it this particular mechanical setup that won't scale? - Is it that vision cannot be miniaturized? - Is it energy density that is not high enough? - Is it material strength? - If the application goal is to for example land in a tree or circumvent all kind of tiny obstacles very fast, are there better mechanisms? I'm always really interested in miniaturization. From watches to chips. So if someone tells it won't work in a particular field, that's important to know.

sgnelson 8y ago
Scale way in the upwards direction. As you noted, it's great at small size. We can build ornithopters at the scale of this and bird sized devices, and they fly pretty well, but getting to man sized and airplane sized, would be quite difficult and inefficient. I'm sorry, but I'm too lazy to answer all of your questions at the moment, though they're good questions. But generally the answer to all of your questions is "yes." (with the exception of the last question, which is "I don't know", but if you've seen a hummingbird or dragon fly, you know exactly how insanely maneuverable they are, and I don't know if I've ever seen better. For more information, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ornithopter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ornithopter