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Feathered robotic wing paves way for flapping drones
- gardenfelder 4y agopaper - open access https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/aisy.202200148 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/aisy.202200148
- andrewl 4y agoI had a toy ornithopter many years ago. It didn’t fly too well, but I thought it was really cool. I’m looking forward to advances in the field. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ornithopter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ornithopter
- JKCalhoun 4y agoA decent ornithopter is going to be a wild technology: I mean literally you'll have to wonder if the bird that flew by is real or not. Crazy times are coming.
- amelius 4y agoReminds me of the pigeons used during the cold war era. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-49692534 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-49692534
- 15155 4y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AeroVironment_Nano_Hummingbird https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AeroVironment_Nano_Hummingbird
- mkoryak 4y agoDo you live underneath a rock? Haven't you heard that birbs aren't real?
- jaclaz 4y agoAround ten years ago there was this "Smartbird" which was much more than a toy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SmartBird https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SmartBird but apart an initial hype I think it was never further developed. A video is linked from the wikipedia page: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kA7PNQiHT1Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kA7PNQiHT1Q
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- dt3ft 4y agoImagine the potential noise reduction! Also cool seeing my university on HN :)
- ModernMech 4y agoSince these are real feathers, would any machines using these wings be cyborgs rather than robots? Cybirds?
- bassrattle 4y agoIf a woman who wears a feather boa is partly a bird, then yes!
- mhb 4y agoA recent interesting ornithopter: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TXg-qoRN0co https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TXg-qoRN0co Paper: https://doi.org/10.1109/TRO.2022.3189812 https://doi.org/10.1109/TRO.2022.3189812
- tomcam 4y agoEerily good
- JKCalhoun 4y agoAnd a bird of prey attacking an ornithopter: https://youtu.be/VDihDrdPBqo?t=215 https://youtu.be/VDihDrdPBqo?t=215
- calebegg 4y agoInteresting
- echelon 4y agoBoth of these videos are must-watch. Wow.
- frozencell 4y agoSo bad there is no sound
- bloopernova 4y agoThat video makes me realize that we're still in the earliest days of drone warfare. Imagine the ability to soar on thermals for hours, it would greatly change reconnaissance and loitering strike drones. A flock of strike eagle drones all turning towards your convoy's position would be a terrifying thing to see. I don't know how you'd be able to attack such a flock effectively if they scatter when sensing and incoming missile or shell. Perhaps an air battle of the future will look like 2 flocks of birds crashing into each other? I wonder if a hummingbird drone would be more energy efficient than a quadcopter?
- codetrotter 4y agoFlappy Drone :D
- godmode2019 4y agoBirds arent real meme https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=lsgnrYog6W0 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=lsgnrYog6W0
- chris1993 4y agoThis will require some robotic preening functionality too.
- vongomben 4y agoWas looking for build one, but kinda disappointed by the state of the art. I assume many things are going to happen on this page As a referral, interesting https://www.ornithopter.org https://www.ornithopter.org
- ChrisMarshallNY 4y agoThis looks pretty cool. But I regularly watch Red-Tailed hawks, around these parts, and they not only change the way they flap their wings, they drastically alter the surface area of their wings; dependent upon the type of flying they are doing. Sort of like ailerons, on airplanes. For example, when they are "on a mission," going from "here," to "there," they trim their wings, so they are narrow and smooth. They almost look like gulls, in flight. However, when they are hunting, which involves slow, flapless, soaring, they spread out all their feathers, so their wings have a great deal of surface area.
- jimmcslim 4y agoI’m guessing that these aren’t yet more energy efficient than a quadcopter drone?
- worldsayshi 4y agoIs there reason to believe they ever will be?
- krisoft 4y agoYes. Birds themselves are super efficient. If you ever see a red kite staying stationary in a breeze by only wiggling some feathers here and now you can see that for yourself. You can also look at the distance flown by certain bird species. The current recorded longest continous bird flight is that of a bar-tailed godwit which has flown from Alaska to Tasmania. It was flying for 11 days nonstop, a journey of 8,425 miles (13,560 km).[1] These birds weigh approximatelly 290g. Quadrocopters in the same weight range fly for half an hour to maybe an hour? And the godwit fits into this weight budget the energy storage, propulsion, navigation, landing gear, and facilities to reproduce, and facilities to extract energy from stuff found in nature. If any roboticist could mimic this flying feat with any flying machine in the same weight category they would be pretty pleased with themselves. In short, there is plenty of reason to suspect it is possible to make more energy efficient flying machines than what we have currently. 1: https://earthsky.org/earth/longest-nonstop-bird-flight-world-record-bar-tailed-godwit-2022/ https://earthsky.org/earth/longest-nonstop-bird-flight-world...
- worldsayshi 4y agoInteresting! > In short, there is plenty of reason to suspect it is possible to make more energy efficient flying machines than what we have currently. I have no doubt about that. Although I wonder what birds would look like if evolution had figured out ball bearings and rotational motors.
- imtringued 4y agoIt would have figured out that they are quite heavy.
- thunkshift1 4y agoWhy?
- headsoup 4y agoI feel it's more important to ask "why would we really want a flapping drone, other than 'fun toy?' Faking out birds seems to me like a poor answer.
- perilunar 4y agoOrnithopters are more manoeuvrable than fixed wing drones, and (potentially) more efficient than quadcopters or helicopters.
- onefish 4y agoThe aerodynamics of flapping aren't actually very well understood, so one of the reasons is just a platform for applied experiments. The reason you would want such a platform is because bird fight is potentially more energy efficient than anything humans have developed (as seems to be the case with so many naturally evolved mechanisms).
- twelvedogs 4y agoevolution produces end results that are worthwhile fully understanding at the very least, i imagine hovering around on updrafts is pretty energy efficient off the top of my head too
- beambot 4y agoNoise? Drone propellers are ridiculously loud.
- Animats 4y agoSurveillance drones. If not in use in Ukraine already, they probably will be soon.
- m463 4y agoI think the answer would be "what birds do is quiet and efficeent, we should do that!" But really it's probably just like robotic hands - we just don't have small powerful/precise robotic muscles and we won't do a good job. So I think we're not going to completely emulate a bird soon.
- vintermann 4y agoMy brother bought a flapping drone/remote controlled bird for my son's birthday many years ago. AirHogs Firewing it was called. I had no idea such things existed. I think they weren't a great success. Not a precision instrument by any means - it had a bias to fly to one side, and the box included weighted stickers to address this issue. And also, it's a miracle that we didn't break it. But the technology to do this as a toy has clearly been around for a while.