25 ms·

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 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