Floating manta ray with beating wing drive | Hacker News Reader

Floating manta ray with beating wing drive

festo.com

83 pointsthunderbong24 comments

Festo have a long history making technical things fun. As a young teenager some 45 years or so ago, I used to go every year with my toolmaker Dad to the engineering expo in Sydney. I always recall Festo putting various demonstrations of their pneumatic and automation components doing fun things.

Very cool, I love how life-like and kind of soothing the motion is. And how it's able to flip and fly on its back, really neat!

Also: I just had to look this up since it's always (?) been bugging me: Festo (the company in the OP) founded Festool (the power tool manufacturer known for high quality, systainers, and Apple-esque pricing) [2]. The logos are just soooo similar. Phew, that was calming.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Festo

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Festool

Can’t wait until Dewalt or Makita make a flying manta ray we can actually afford.

Oh my goodness. I finally know who was behind the floating robot at the Dubai museum of the future! Had a chance to visit it last year and their flying robot was the best part of the whole experience :D . Thanks for sharing this. Amazing to see all their other robots at work on YouTube.

I always wonder what it's like to be working as a non-engineering person at Festo given that:

- they make super cool stuff

- they seem to test anything flying in their indoor lobby

- it seems a lot of their offices have windows pointing toward the lobby

"Oh, look! Today it's a giant floating manta ray!"

This thing is featured in the book Zero History by William Gibson

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero_History

Actually, they have one of these bionic "showcase projects" every year (really good PR for an otherwise largely unknow company if you ask me): https://www.festo.com/us/en/e/about-festo/research-and-devel...

Their products are being used by military for spying. Few years ago, their bird was crashed (or was shot down) in Pakistan. https://www.wired.com/2011/08/weird-birdlike-mystery-drone-c...

EDIT: just realized from pictures that even though it looks very similar, they don't look the same. But still it can be a different version from the same company.

Fest is a german company, they sell mostly valves and pneumatic automation solutions to german machine building companys. The bionic creatures are a nice gimick, but they are not in any form or shape a finnished product.

The drone in Pakistan was a bird shaped airplane with a prop. An ornithopter is a wildly different machine.

Festo keeps on impressing with their tech demos. Not only interesting tech, but also good presentation.

From watching the video, I wonder: do the wings perform actual work, or is the movement controlled in some other way?

Very cool! Does anyone know if there have been similar 'wing drive' ideas in the past?

Well, ornithopters are older than fixed-wing aeroplanes, so yes?

This one has a servo to manually control the wing twist (Fin Ray Effect®!), rather than rely on aeroelastic twisting, so that's novel.

Cool stuff. The video has a real 90s vibe though...

And here I thought Festo only made expensive track saws...

Is festool the same company?

No, but Festool was spun out of/founded by Festo.

What is the practical application of such tech?

Keeping your technician’s excited about working for your company.

Giant solar powered robo-sunfish for corraling schools of fish in aquaculture is a possibility. Got to move fast and be carbon neutral environment friendly.

Tech demo for a robotics company.

Pinata 2.0

This is about (2007)

Cool performance by them - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nTIqV1AloOI

Wish hobbyist would do more of this stuff. It's cool art.

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