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Silent Flyer – A Birdlike Drone
- tamimio 3y agoLove the concept! Wish they showed the actual “bird” flying and not just 3D renders. That being said, I would love to see how they will overcome the power/battery issue, given they market it to be better than quad in terms of the flight time.
- perilunar 3y agoIn theory ornithopters are more efficient that quadcopters, since you are moving more air (momentum) at a lower delta-v (energy). In practice a lot depends on the efficiency of the drive train.
- acyou 3y agoCare to elaborate?
- perilunar 3y agoLift is caused by the change in momentum of the air deflected by the wing, and is proportional to the velocity, while the energy required to move the air is proportional to the square of the velocity. For a given amount of lift, a larger wing moves more air, but gives it a smaller change in velocity, so requires less energy. i.e. large slow wings are more efficient than small, fast wings; large slow propellors are more efficient than small, fast propellors. Two large flapping wings are more efficient than four small, fast propellers.
- a_gnostic 3y agoA.k.a. the Bernoulli Principle
- dylan604 3y agoWhen all they show is 3D renders and no real product, all they have are 3D renders. Classic tell tale signs of vaporware
- baal80spam 3y agoI thought it was a well known fact that all pigeons are mechanized and are used for surveillance. /s
- DueDilligence 3y ago[dead]
- ricardobeat 3y agoNo prototypes?
- RegW 3y agoYes, I thought I must be missing something. Seems like a great idea, but I only see animations and not much to suggest that this isn't just a dream.
- CamperBob2 3y agoI doubt one exists, or will anytime soon. People have literally been trying to build this sort of thing since the days of Leonardo^WIcarus, but power-to-weight ratio has always gotten in the way. Besides having hollow bones that weigh basically nothing, birds have a combination of fine motor control, proprioception, and power management that we don't even have good models for yet. We'll get there, of course, but not this month. Would love to be proven wrong with an actual video, but there's nothing on the site but rendered animations. If they had something to show, they'd show it.
- thenickdude 3y agoRemote-controlled ornithopters are already flying today: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3vm-Yq6xiSk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3vm-Yq6xiSk The 3D renders don't look much more ambitious than this.
- CamperBob2 3y agoThat's pretty cool, but I don't agree that it's in the same league as what's being sold here. They'll need to scale it up 10x and make it soar, glide, and turn, and climb and dive under power, without sounding like a steampunk automaton, and while still looking like an actual bird with articulated wings.
- perilunar 3y agoPower-to-weight is only an issue for human-powered ornithopters. Battery or internal combustion powered (and even rubber band powered) ornithopters work fine.
- gcanyon 3y agoThe obvious question is flight duration. Until that's answered, no other claim means anything.
- gcanyon 3y agoI have a friend who's deep into RC flight, and he says that current state-of-the-art in flapping models fly poorly. It seems like it would be easier to 1. Build something that looks like a bird soaring 2. Power it with either a ducted fan or a prop-on-top-of-the-wing design, either way so the prop wouldn’t be visible from the ground, but the wings don't have to (fully) flap -- maybe they move a little to give a life-like appearance.
- 1attice 3y agoGD it. [logs back into chat] "Ok, so it turns out, some birds aren't real. I hope you're happy."
- macinjosh 3y agoI was day dreaming about something like this the other day. Was wondering if it would be possible to land it on an overhead power line and recharge.
- dtgriscom 3y agoInteresting idea. Land in the middle of a high tension line, extend a (not too long) antenna, and then capture the (high voltage but low current) leakage.
- jessegrosjean 3y agoSeems like the perfect way to make sure that all birds are shot in a war zone?
- a_gnostic 3y agoWouldn't be the first time. "Eradicate pests and diseases and build happiness for ten thousand generations" –M. Zedong (1960)
- m4rtink 3y agoNot sure that is really even possible, there is a lot of birds & they migrate all over.
- dylan604 3y agoAccording to HN threads, just release a few house cats, and they'll destroy all wild life
- londons_explore 3y agoIt's a bad sign for any company when they have headshots of the team on their webpage before any picture/video of the actual product (3d renders don't count). In fact, I can't think of a single such company which ended up successful.
- echelon 3y agoThe 3D renders give me pause too. This would be incredibly cool if it doesn't turn out to be vaporware. If it does pan out, Birds Aren't Real [1-3] could finally become reality. [1] https://birdsarentreal.com/ https://birdsarentreal.com/ [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birds_Aren%27t_Real https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birds_Aren%27t_Real [3] https://www.ted.com/talks/peter_mcindoe_birds_aren_t_real_how_a_conspiracy_takes_flight https://www.ted.com/talks/peter_mcindoe_birds_aren_t_real_ho...
- parsimo2010 3y agoI was thinking the same thing- the web page lists four employees, two advisors, and two founders. Some of those may be duplicates, but they spent an awful lot of space on the people, and only brief parts of the video on the (computer rendered) product. Maybe some investors will be interested in the names behind the company, but nobody in the police/surveillance market cares. They want to see how closely it looks/sounds like a real bird, how long the battery lasts, etc. I expect that savvy investors realize that too, and probably aren’t chomping at the bit to invest in a company that goes public without at least a prototype to show off.
- justinl33 3y agoAnyone else here ever seen a bird hover without wind blowing in the other direction?
- dmoy 3y agoI assume we're not talking about hummingbirds? Other than that no I don't think I've seen a bird truly hover not upwind (i.e. static in 3 dimensions, not an artifact of parallax from me also moving
- justinl33 3y agoHummingbirds are actually a great counterexample, nice. They might have to make it nuclear powered to attain 70 wing beats a second in a vessel light/small enough to sustain flight though.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- nick222226 3y agoActually yeah, plenty of larger birds of prey hover high off the ground to look for moving targets. I have seen it myself.
- justinl33 3y agoBut they’re probably high off the ground in a healthy flow of wind current right, as Newton’s third law would dictate. I could be wrong - mainly just nitpicking the way the demo video relentlessly mentions that the bird can hover
- wood_spirit 3y agoKestrels can hover in a perfect calm https://amp.theguardian.com/news/2011/sep/09/weatherwatch-kestrel-windhover https://amp.theguardian.com/news/2011/sep/09/weatherwatch-ke...
- dtgriscom 3y agoThere are some real pictures on the press page, but nothing that looks like it could actually fly. https://www.silentflyer.tech/press/ https://www.silentflyer.tech/press/
- posix86 3y agoSurely the idea of building a drone based on a bird has crossed drone manufacturers mind, and given that no drones like this exist, I expect there to be technical hurdals to get it working. I see no mention of innovative technology, save the idea of building it in the shape of a bird, and a nice 3d render. Highly skeptical.
- shermantanktop 3y agoI don’t disagree with the points you make, but not the idea that lack of similar products means this is doomed. Someone always ends up being first to succeed, and until that point others look in that direction and decide to pursue safer paths.
- posix86 3y agoDefinitely not. But just the intent to do something novel is not enough to innovate. The superficial impression I got of them is that their sole difference to competing drone manufacturers is the intent to build one in bird-shape, which I highly doubt is unique, and probably explored by more experienced engineers. The only way to build something that hasn't been built before is by using something novel, a material, manufacturing process, etc - something I don't see, which is why I'm sceptical. But open to be proven wrong of course.
- krisoft 3y ago> and given that no drones like this exist This is not true. Here is a video of a bird-like drone: https://youtu.be/kio6w3Xu3-w?si=W8h0eHe9gpP_NpQI https://youtu.be/kio6w3Xu3-w?si=W8h0eHe9gpP_NpQI
- sandworm101 3y agoUseless. Drones are not "seen" with cameras and then identified as drones. They are detected on radar, or by their control signals, and identified based on how they sound electronically. Making it look like a bird to the human eye as useful as it would seem. If you want to fool a cassual observer, say a soldier glancing upwards occasionally, then shape it like a soaring hawk. But dont bother with flapping wings. Just use a transparent prop. About 1000 feet nobody will tell the difference.
- girvo 3y ago> Drones are not "seen" with cameras and then identified as drones Depends. Not every part of the Ukraine front has state of the art EWAR capabilities (on either side), and is infested with drones. That said, it's still not that useful IMO simply because soldiers can't really notice normal quadrocopter drones when they're flying high anyway, or even if they can there's so many of them because they're so cheap that it doesn't matter if the drone doesn't make a return trip. Agreed that bird-like-but-soaring would be a better fit -- I can't see flapping as needed at all
- sandworm101 3y agoBut most all of ukraine does have laptops and SDR dongles capable of sniffing out a drone that is transmitting footage back to controllers. Add a directional antenna and you can build a reasonable drone detector for a few hundred bucks.
- m4rtink 3y agoI guess you could do a recon version that dumps footage once it gets back - no rel time feed but could be useful for cladestinly looking for more static things. Still, its more likely faster flying screemer drones from hell will get even better to not make this thing useful. Like, when I saw the Screamers movie from a rented VHS cassette many years ago, I would not think I would see it happen in reality- but even more deadly! Like sure, in the movie those killer robots were autonomous and self replicating. But they still had just a tiny buzz saw & had to jump from the ground to gut soft targets like infantrymen. They didn't fly at you at 200 km/h with a HEAT warhead that can kill a modern main battle tank by single well placed hit!
- a1o 3y agoWait, I have seen this at least ten years ago. It was a concept that had a working version, made by Festo.
- rasz 3y agoYou have seen it in 1983 War Games, Dr. Falken plying with his flying robot dinosaur. Nowadays we are at 'its so simple and cheap we can make toys' stage https://zing.store/collections/go-go-bird https://zing.store/collections/go-go-bird One of the toys in flight: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VDihDrdPBqo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VDihDrdPBqo