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Feasibility of a Dune Ornithopter
- adolph 5y agoOriginal inception dates back to Leonardo da Vinci, but it is not until recently that we have been able to achieve these flight characteristics on small scales. I wonder what is meant by recently. The first ornithopters capable of flight were constructed in France. Jobert in 1871 used a rubber band to power a small model bird. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ornithopter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ornithopter I think the work would also be improved by a mention of bio-inspired work on the PRANDTL-D wing. The Armstrong team (supported by a large contingent of NASA Aeronautics Academy interns) built upon the 1933 research of the German engineer Ludwig Prandtl to design and validate a scale model of a non-elliptical loaded wing that reduces drag and increases efficiency. The team also applied these concepts to improve propeller blades. https://technology-afrc.ndc.nasa.gov/featurestory/prandtl-wing-design https://technology-afrc.ndc.nasa.gov/featurestory/prandtl-wi...
- pvg 5y agoFor some reason I'd mostly seen Pénaud's model in popular accounts but googling Jobert landed me at a site that has a bunch of illustrations from Progress in Flying Machines (1894) that shows what they all looked like. Jobert's first: https://invention.psychology.msstate.edu/i/Chanute/library/photos/Prog_Fig16.gif https://invention.psychology.msstate.edu/i/Chanute/library/p... And the whole lot: https://invention.psychology.msstate.edu/i/Chanute/library/Prog_Illustrations.html https://invention.psychology.msstate.edu/i/Chanute/library/P...
- phendrenad2 5y agoLeonardo da Vinci's designs weren't ornithopters, or even anything like real birds. They were fixed-wing gliders with fanciful bat-like shapes for stylistic reasons.
- Gravityloss 5y agoIf you construct a fabric+wood ribs wing, it will easily look bat-like. Many early airplanes were like that too.
- bryanrasmussen 5y ago>They were fixed-wing gliders with fanciful bat-like shapes for stylistic reasons. My understanding is they were commissioned by playboy Milanese nobleman intent on bringing down the Borgia crime family, whose parents had been knifed down in an alley in front of him when still a child after exiting a wonderful setting of the Magnificat composed by Gaffurius.
- ccozan 5y agoWait, is this the _original_ Batman origin story?
- robbedpeter 5y agoI'd be very wary about asserting stylistic intent to da Vinci when it comes to engineering endeavors. Many of his architectural designs were thought fanciful and entirely unfeasible until someone actually built it, or built it with the right materials. I would hazard that there is a lot of thoughtful consideration that went into the ornithopter designs, to the extent that a breakthrough or major insight lies waiting for anyone able to decipher or parallel da Vinci's reasoning.
- smoldesu 5y agoNot a huge Dune lore-head, but I kinda feel slighted by how the new movie depicted them now...
- BEEdwards 5y agoI disagree, I liked the dragonfly inspired ornithopter. Maybe not as originally envisioned, but I like the aesthetic.
- craftinator 5y ago> Maybe not as originally envisioned, but I like the aesthetic. I think you'll find that you've identified the target market for almost all modern film adaptations of science fiction novels.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- edmundsauto 5y agoDoubly true if the elided part of the quoted section is > Maybe not as (I) originally envisioned, but I like the aesthetic. I am guilty of this in every book to film adaptation I've ever seen. (Also - book sales / movie audience ratios will almost always necessitate generalization.)
- yoz-y 5y agoI might have misheard, but aren't they also referred to as "jetflies" in the chase scene? That is a bit more apt name for this particular design.
- jcun4128 5y agoI did like how they look like helicopter blades and it is built like a gunship/AH64 style. The gliding stuff was like hmm... also generally as a side note, giant things would sink through the ground like the opening ship landing oh well.
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- kleer001 5y agoas feasible as any other tech in Dune, shields, laseguns, space folding, genetic memory, etc...
- walrus01 5y agogiant floating guild navigators in tanks of spice that resemble wrinkled testicles? as per the 1984 film
- Ansil849 5y ago...but apparently not as per the 2021 film. Seriously, where did the guild navigators go in the Zendaya version?
- walrus01 5y agoPerhaps the CGI testicle budget was spent on salary for Jason Momoa instead
- robbedpeter 5y agoIf you're gonna have giant balls in the movie, you have to do it right.
- est31 5y agoThe first scene of the 1984 movie does not exist in the books, even though they were depicted correctly. In fact, they didn't appear directly in the original Dune book at all, and they were only described in later books of the series (Both the 2021 and 1984 movies are adaptations of the first book, the 2021 one adapting the first 75% ish).
- carapace 5y agoSPOILER ALERT Two Guild Navigators are in the Emperor's party on Arrakis when he confronts the "upstart duke". They are not mutant freaks, they look like normal humans, but their eyes are so blue from spice use that they appear black. The weird fish-baby in a tank is all David Lynch being David Lynch.
- carapace 5y agoOne of the interesting details not mentioned in the book (it's in either one of the appendices or in the Dune Encyclopedia) is that the wings are powered by muscles, not engines. It's an aspect of the minimal use of technology in that Universe.
- sandworm101 5y agoI wouldn't say a minimal use of tech, more that they use very mature tech. Mature tech 'just works' with minimal intrusion or maintenance. I think of it like home heating systems. Once we all had fires or stoves as central objects in houses. Now we have a switch on a wall connected to a system that can go years without maintenance. Sure, there is an entire industry behind the scenes and some debate the benefits of one tech over another, but the average user only ever sees the switch. So the ornithopter's engines have been replaced by electromechanical muscles because they probably go decades without need of attention.
- carapace 5y agoYou're right that the technology they use is very mature, but anti-machine stigma is a definite "thing" in the Dune milieu, blowback from the Butlerian Jihad. At one point Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam says something to the Lady Jessica about the difficulties of working with a feudal culture that has "turned it's back on most technology", something like that. Ornithopter muscles are not electromechanical, they're organic.
- superkuh 5y ago>blowback from the Butlerian Jihad. Which itself is a reference to Samuel Butler's 1872 satirical novel "Erewhon" which featured a culture that had banned all complex machines due to an experience with machine intelligences revolting. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erewhon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erewhon
- sandworm101 5y agoI think the language re "machines" in the Dune context refers more to thinking devices, computers, than to mechanization.
- walrus01 5y agohuman powered ornithopter: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UTIAS_Snowbird https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UTIAS_Snowbird
- tait 5y agoDid anybody else find the changing tab title annoying?
- joecool1029 5y agoPretty sure the author did it as a troll, in which case it's great, I hate it. > <!-- Javascript to make dat scrolling title SON! --> ^ comment on it
- vadfa 5y agoI miss the days of quirky title bar "animations".
- phkahler 5y agoI had a rubber band powered bird over 35 years ago. Looked a lot like this: https://youtu.be/GqWkctx3Z2I https://youtu.be/GqWkctx3Z2I
- elihu 5y agoI just watched the new movie today; it's good. The dragonfly-like wings were an interesting choice. It seems like they'd be less efficient at lift than a jointed wing, but then I thought, maybe an unusual wing surface material could be used? The problem is that when the wings go up, they're pushing air in the wrong direction and propelling the ornithopter down. But suppose the wing was covered in tiny little hinged flaps that close on a downstroke, but open on an upstroke? That way the upstroke would push the aircraft down much less than the downstroke lifts.. (These wouldn't even need to be controlled in any way, they could just be passive flaps. Though being able to lock them closed might be useful for certain acrobatic maneuvers.)
- generalizations 5y agoYou just change the angle of the wing on the upstroke so it's slicing through the air. It's not actually a problem. :) Same thing real dragonflies and even birds do (though birds fold up their wings too).
- elihu 5y agoI kind of assumed that's what actual dragonflies do (I mean, they have to get lift somehow), but for a very large wing that rotation must cause quite a bit of drag in itself. In the movie, the ornithopter wings are maybe 50 to 100 feet long and usually moving too fast to see. I would tend to assume that the aerodynamics would be different for something that huge than an insect, but I don't have any good intuition for what would be most efficient. Maybe a combination of wing rotation and self-opening flaps would be best? Or a wing that splits itself into multiple parallel wings on the upstroke and combines into one on the downstroke? It's interesting that dragonfly wings are so long and thin, which I suppose minimizes the amount of drag as they rotate between the downstroke angle and the upstroke angle.
- sandworm101 5y ago>> the aerodynamics would be different for something that huge With such a large moving airfoil there are inefficiencies. Pretending that the wing is a solid object, very quickly the tips will be moving faster than the speed of sound. At such speeds void/shockwaves start to form, radically changing everything. The root of the wing is barely moving, the tips are supersonic, and somewhere along the middle is a transition zone that moves back and forth depending on speed. Good luck designing that airfoil. (This is what makes the TU-95 Bear so loud. Its propeller tips are supersonic while the rest of the aircraft isn't.) There is a Russian saying about helicopters: You can place every problem in all aerodynamics on the tip of a rotor blade.
- Animats 5y agoDrone-sized ornithopters have become reasonably flyable outdoors. But scaling works against you. One the size of a large helicopter, capable of vertical takeoff, is tough. Mostly a power problem, like all VTOL. Dune, like much of SF, runs on Rule of Cool. The skilled knife fighter, even shielded, is vulnerable to many of the standard anti-riot weapons, such as projectiles which throw a net. Being hit by an RPG round with a solid warhead would at least knock someone down hard, despite shielding, from sheer momentum transfer. And tanks work just fine in the desert, as has been amply demonstrated in the Middle East all the way back to Patton. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJA5C-ghj4s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJA5C-ghj4s
- ceejayoz 5y ago> And tanks work just fine in the desert, as has been amply demonstrated in the Middle East all the way back to Patton. Probably not against sand worms.
- phendrenad2 5y agoAnd not for covering long distances to where the spice is...
- kortex 5y agoTanks are no weapon of choice. The rhythmic nature of the slats in the tank treads as it drives will surely attract a worm. Heh, they'll never learn.
- gilbetron 5y agoWorth posting just because it is still a fun watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQ7z57qrZU8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQ7z57qrZU8
- thrower123 5y agoThis might be from the later Brian Herbert books, but I recall ornithopters having jets or thrusters for VTOL.
- kebman 5y agoHere's a fun and working model aircraft powered by articulated flight: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ysnAVwtdbYc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ysnAVwtdbYc Things that strike me off the bat for creating "the real thing:" Ground effect with rising heat, helping with lift. Longer and lighter wingspans made out of special exotic materials that is incredibly durable, flexible and easy to articulate, perhaps with a "muscular" system. Much stronger, lighter and tuneable machines. Systems or mechanics preventing compartment shake. I think this is probably the most difficult part in order to achieve comfortable flight. The part of a bird best evolved to counteract this movement is the head, since they need that as a stable platform to observe the world despite the rest of the body moving.
- jcun4128 5y agoYeah this guy makes these things like everyday. Recently using direct servo drive is interesting.
- dumdumdumdum 5y agoSomewhat similar: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZCrS52sM3Zs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZCrS52sM3Zs
- rosetremiere 5y agoWow, I love those "concrete tiles". Any idea where this is?
- _Microft 5y agoThe German industrial control and automation company Festo [0] created a bionic swift [1] as an engineering demo this year. The flapping wings are no longer as rigid as in their earlier flapping bird model [2]. Go and check out their other stuff (e.g. a dragonfly: [3], a flying fox or aquatic animals), it's great! Here is a Youtube search for Festo Animals for your convenience [4]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Festo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Festo [1] BionicSwift: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUE8o056Cpc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUE8o056Cpc [2] SmartBird: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnR8fDW3Ilo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnR8fDW3Ilo [3] Dragonfly: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nj1yhz5io20 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nj1yhz5io20 [4] https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Festo+Animals https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Festo+Animals
- elihu 5y agoReminds me of Tyrell Corporation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VSOzdFoZsho https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VSOzdFoZsho
- dvh 5y agoHow does that make you feel?
- audiometry 5y agoLet me tell you how it makes me feel.
- tunnuz 5y agoDo you like our owl?
- k__ 5y agoA friend of mine lives a few cities from a Festo factory. She didn't know what they build, but she always said the name Festo sounds like being an evil corp in a scifi story. She was a bit shook, when I told her about the robots, haha
- b0rsuk 5y ago> This state of constant, high magnitude stress, leads to a very short fatigue life for the structure. So maybe the wings should be living? Nature seems to have perfected automatic repair. > This is currently not possible, and it will never be attempted. There's a novel by Jack Vance which works around the technical difficulties by having a low gravity planet, and descendants of colonists use material from the outer parts of the spaceship. So there's very limited supply of this space tech substance, and wings are passed from generation to generation.
- telesilla 5y agoReminds me, where or when can I buy a robobee? https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hEZ7rHRifVc https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hEZ7rHRifVc
- everyone 5y agoWhen I visit that site in firefox the name of the tab keeps changing.. A bunch of zeroes getting longer, then shorter. Is that some intentional javascript thing??
- jcun4128 5y agoSaw same thing in Chrome
- pharmakom 5y agoI always thought Dune had lower gravity, would also explain how the worms work. Also note there is low gravity tech. Maybe it’s a hybrid.
- KineticLensman 5y ago> I always thought Dune had lower gravity, would also explain how the worms work. On page 79 of 'Dune' (my 1973 paperback copy), when the Atreides soldiers first land on Arrakis, a group of them 'shout and roister' as they disembark. One of them says 'Nine-tenths of a G by the book'. Another says 'Feel that under your dogs? That's gravity, man.' So not massively different from Earth-normal. Not sure if is this enough to affect the feasibility of a winged craft (or sandworms). On that note, air pressure would also affect the feasibility of winged vehicles, as in the difficulty of trying to fly a (small) helicopter on Mars.
- underscore_ku 5y agoRC Ornithopter https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Nd8BA3OHCc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Nd8BA3OHCc
- nabla9 5y agoThe idea that what works for insects or small birds should work in larger scale if you just have materials does not hold up. Small insect wing aerodynamics is closer to high viscosity aerodynamics. Viscous forces are more important and efficacy of lift generation from an airfoil is less important. Air can be considered incompressible. Reynolds numbers (Re) - orders of magnitude. 10^7 for helicopter main rotor 10^4 for large insects 10 for small insects Helicopter rotor aerodynamics is in laminar flow region limited from above buy the transonic region. Airfoil lift is the most important thing and laminar flow is important. Insect flight is mostly turbulent flow. Generating enough lift using leading edge vortex and half strokes like insects do for helicopter sized object and rotor sized wing is not self evident. At least the wings should be much larger than helicopter rotors and flap very slowly.
- Sharlin 5y agoYeah. For insects, flying really is more like swimming. Air has very different properties at that scale.
- fnord77 5y agothe wings make the craft much wider than a helicopter, plus someone could easily walk into them when it is on the ground, idling. wonder why no insects evolved with a rotating wing. rotating propulsion exists in nature, though at a microscopic level. (flagella)
- rini17 5y agoI guess ability to stow wings easily is a big advantage. To stow any kind of rotating propellers is problematic. These ornithopters can certainly stow the wings too, it just never came up in the story.
- aj7 5y agoI’ve often wondered the exact opposite. Could thrust turbines evolve naturally?