Fly like a seagull into the future
Posted 03.25.2011 at 10:14 am
18 Comments
SmartBird
Festo
A new lifelike seagull ‘bot is one of the most realistic bio-inspired flight machines we’ve seen. SmartBird takes off, flies and lands on its own, flapping its wings and turning its head and tail to steer. It is modeled on the herring gull and its appearance and movements are uncannily similar to the real thing.
Designed by the German firm Festo, which also brought us the elephant-trunk-inspired robotic arm and the autonomous robotic jellyfish, SmartBird is Festo’s newest entry in its Bionic Learning Network program, which involves several universities in the U.S. and Europe and aims to use nature as a model for mechatronic systems.
The bird has a 6.5-foot wingspan, so it’s much larger than a real gull, but it looks pretty much like the real thing, as you can see in the video below.
SmartBird flies like a seagull thanks to an active torsion system combined with a complex control system. Its wings each consist of a two-part arm wing spar with an axle bearing on the torso. The wings and tail are the only mechanisms creating lift, and Festo engineers had to figure out bird flight in order to do it.
The company explains: “First, the wings beat up and down, whereby a lever mechanism causes the degree of deflection to increase from the torso to the wing tip. Second, the wing twists in such a way that its leading edge is directed upwards during the upward stroke, so that the wing adopts a positive angle of attack.”
The tail acts as an elevator and rudder, stabilizing the bird in straight-line flight and helping it change direction. Here's how it works:
Perhaps not as unobtrusive as the teeny hummingbird spy drone, but impressive nonetheless.
[via IEEE]
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That's awesome, one step closer to being able to mimic mother nature. Now lets see this thing hover and poo on people or dive in and steal some food from someone's hands!
that is f--ing awesome
That was unexpectedly impressive.
If you want it to pass as a real gull, it'll have to swoop down and grab my sandwich from me at the beach.
But, seriously, that was kind of unexpectedly impressive!
sheer genius!
where can I buy one, and how much does it cost?
Incredibly impressive... A few years back I was reading about how amazing natural flight was in birds. Here it is almost replicated by man. Does Festo have any shares in NYSE?
The machine is groovy. But I'm not sure about the article.
The article states that 'SmartBird takes off, flies and lands on its own,'. I can't figure out how it could possibly take off without feet, or wheels or something.
a slick underside.
Da Vinci would be proud.
-my name here-
For landing sure, but I don't think it could take off that way. I think the wings would beat against the ground. perhaps I'm just nit-picking, but to me accuracy in reporting is important. Its sometimes hard to tell if what you read is real or made up.
Do we REALLY need another spy drone?
I SOO WANT ONE!!!!!
After they work on design, size, landing, taking off, and other stuff.
Yup ... These birds will soon be able to harvest energy from power-lines and will be able to endeavor sorties of unlimited duration.
I'd like to see that seagull try to steal my French fry
That company if flippin' AWESOME!!!
i wonder if you can make a "pooing" bird that will anoy the crap out of people!!!! or at least a dog that will never SHUT UP BARKING XD
The robot bird is a pretty cool invention. Who would have ever thought that there could be a flying bird. This is amazing.