Feathered robotic wing paves way for flapping drones
alphagalileo.org
alphagalileo.org
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?
Phalanx CIWS Close-in Weapon System In Action - US Navy's Deadly Autocannon
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.
Faking out birds seems to me like a poor answer.
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.
Crazy times are coming.
Haven't you heard that birbs aren't real?
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:
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.
As a referral, interesting https://www.ornithopter.org
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...
> 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.
The big advantage they have is maneuverability and mechanical simplicity. Quadcopters can move in any direction and can hover in place. Quadcopters do not need control surfaces or variable pitch props. All they need is 4 motors with 4 basic props and everything is done electronically in software.
Also cool seeing my university on HN :)