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Real-life Ornithopter to Take Flight?
A reader writes "According to this article at space.com, researchers at the University of Toronto have designed and built a working ornithopter. Their design will (hopefully) lift off solely powered by the motion of its articulated wings. First envisaged by Leonardo da Vinci, many will recall ornithopers' prominent role in Frank Herbert's Dune books. The U. Toronto Ornithopter project page is is found at ornithopter.net." "Usul ? , Base of the Pillar"
Why else would you waste deck-space for a 0/2 flying?
Google cache for Ornithopter.net. For the link wary
n g_ en%7Clang_fr%7Clang_de&q=site%3Awww.ornithopter.ne t+ornithopter
http://www.google.com/search?num=30&hl=en&lr=la
Cheers,
Toby Haynes
Anything I post is strictly my own thoughts and doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the opinions of IBM.
The article's first paragraph says
Kind of misleading. The Wright brothers' design was based almost exactly on the bird's wing, but in the bird's "gliding" mode (wherein the curved top surface creates faster moving air, which causes lower air pressure above, which effects lift).
The Wrights wisely avoided the complicated "flapping" mode of wings by creating the necessary forward motion using a prop.
Look, up there in the sky. It's a bird ... It's a plane ... No wait ... what the hell is that?!?!?
Ornithopter
Advanced design is relying on nature's model more and more: from "fish scales" that speed up boats, to robotic actuators that limber up synthetic muscles and joints. But the oldest concept of how a machine would fly, based on the action of bird's wings, still hasn't taken flight.
Envisioned first by Leonardo Da Vinci in the 1500's, an "orinthopter's" major design dilemma is getting the up an down motion of the wings to be strong enough for lift off, while not destroying the body of the plane in the process. Modern piloted ornithopters, despite Kevlar and Plexiglas, are thus still on the ground.
But researchers at the University of Toronto's Institute for Aerospace Studies claim their machine will either get off the ground in the next few weeks, or prove that a bird-brained plane is an impossible design challenge.
"It's been a balancing act, challenging the aerodynamics and structural dynamics," said Derek Bilyk, an engineer who came to the project as a graduate student three years ago. " This fall, we will have taken the aircraft to the limits of its performance, but we're pretty sure it's gonna fly; ninety percent sure."
The researchers have reason to be optimistic. The ornithopter did achieve a take-off speed of 55 miles-per-hour last month, powered only by an engine and its bird wings. But the bouncing of the craft was reportedly very uncomfortable for the pilot and may have shaken the plane toward destruction and so the plane was stopped.
Bilyk revealed the landing gear has since gone through a redesign to make it more shock-absorbent, which the eight man team believes will make a viable aircraft, albeit a likely commercial flop.
"I can't think of a good commercial use for it," lamented Bilyk. "But nobody has been successful at it, and yet it the oldest dream of flight."
http://www.ornithopter.net/index.html
"It's a good thing they reevaluated all those wacky old designs." Hugh Parkfield, episode 2F15 "Lisa's Wedding"
Hey freaks: now you're ju
But researchers at the University of Toronto's Institute for Aerospace Studies claim their machine will either get off the ground in the next few weeks, or prove that a bird-brained plane is an impossible design challenge.
So if their current project doesn't work, we can all stop working on the problem. They've done everything that can be done, learned everything that can be learned, tried everything that can be tried. We have finally reached the limits of human knowledge.
Whew. Thank God that's over. All that exploration and research was starting to get exhausting.
Nope, no sig
Screw the 'thopter. I'd rather have a 300 meter worm.
I searched google and found some pictures
Does anyone know which one is the one they are talking about in the artical?
-Jon
this is my sig.
IIRC, a bird's wings move forward & up, at an angle, round, then down almost straight, to produce a net lift.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
What strikes me with this project, is that the thing still has to go to 55Mph to take off.
Most bird take off instantly with just flapping.
Note that the uncomfortable feeling for the pilot on their last test would have been eliminated with instant take off.
I will not consider the thing a succes as long as instant take off is implemented (or at least take off will running instead of rolling).
I've been thinking about building my own (unmanned) ornithopter ever since seeing UTIAS's prototypes flying on Discovery Channel a few years back.
To eliminate vibration in most of the craft, you can use two pairs of wings arranged dragonfly-style. Diagonally opposite wings would move in one direction, and the other diagonally opposite pair would move in the other direction 180 degrees out of phase.
The center of mass of the unit stays in one place, and the forces of the wings on the air are symmetrical, so vibration is only in the engine.
Your thrust would still "vibrate" at twice the wings' flapping frequency, but a shock absorber should take care of that. It's vibrating up and down as the wings flap that's the big problem, and using two pairs of wings solves this problem.
As for this being an insurmountable design challenge - it isn't. The mechanics of ornithopters and of bird and insect flight have been well-understood for quite a while now. It's just a materials and engineering issue, and we have enough of a handle on both to build ornithopters.
The real reason why you don't see bird-planes flapping across the sky - and won't in the future - is that using flapping wings is only a benefit for slow-moving craft, and existing slow-moving craft are already adequately efficient (actually, a helicopter might even be _more_ efficient than an ornithopter).
[For anyone wondering, the efficiency gain of an ornithopter comes from it moving a larger mass of air more slowly to generate thrust; same reason a propeller's more efficient than a jet turbine, and a helicopter's blades are more efficient than an airplane's propeller. You're just limited to a slower speed, due to several concerns.]
20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
At least I think they got played. There was an old deck called "Fruity Pebbles" based around Ornithopter (0/2 for 0 mana), Goblin Bombardment (Enchantment: Sacrifice a creature to deal 1 damage to something), and Enduring Renewal (If one of your creatures dies, it returns to your hand). Of course, the smarter players used Shield Wall and Phyrexian Walker as more efficient 0cc creatures, but the deck could and did indeed win tournaments.
-Ted
After all Toy ornithopters ahve been functional sicen ebfore Iw as a child.. and I'm older then the average slashdotter.
A bird may only move in the several miles per hour range, but it does it by eating bits of flowers. A jet engine moves 50-100 times faster but consumes a lot of powerful fuel that has something like 20K-50K times more energy stored in it than those bits of flowers do. Thus, the bird is more efficent, even if he's slower.
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
Not to be pedantic, but that gives you arbitrary mana, not infinite
-no broken link
http://www.utias.utoronto.ca/lowsped.htm
look under "Ornithopters" heading.
just my blog and pix
It isn't just a question of reducing resistence on the up stroke. The fact of the matter is that birds don't fly by pushing themselves upward. Thinking about it a bit will show how such isn't even possible.
Birds fly just as airplanes do, by using a propeller to generate *forward* thrust, and thus airflow over the airfoil surface.
A bird's wing twists on the downstroke in such a manner as to drive it *forward.*
Think of it as a variable pitch prop that can only move up and down, and/or as a previous poster has pointed out, an oar consisting of the large primary feathers of the wingtip.
KFG
themselves upward. Thinking about it a bit will show how such isn't even possible.
Sounds impossible to me too... but try telling that to this guy.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
You think dune, I think Magic: The Gathering. Got an Orny in my first deck ever. Took me months to finally realize how bad the card sucks. =P
And the hordes cry out, "But it's better than a Kobold!"
-Kasreyn
Kasreyn: Cheerfully playing the part of Devil's Advocate to hairtrigger
Hummingbirds are the exception. They are the helicopters of the bird world. And just like helicopters they pay dearly for the ability.
Even so the hummingbird isn't all that different. Just as the helicopter uses a rotating wing with varible pitch, pushing the wing itself forward through the air and then feathering it on the back stroke, so does the humming bird. The rotation just happens in a different plane.
KFG
Not to be pedantic, but you are. :p
Nicotine free Amish .sig.
I think feathers have something to do with increasing birds efficiency in this respect. On the upstroke, the feathers spread and align in such a way that the wind passes through and between them. On the downstroke, they overlap together and 'balloon' to capture the air.
There's also the rigid leading edge that drags the feather up at an angle that cuts through the air on the upstroke, but which also supports the 'ballooning' on the down stroke. The aircraft seems to capture this aspect, but not that of the feathers, which would require a LOT of engineering!
**>>BELCH
It's good to hear it was the reporter who got it wrong, rather than the scientists.
Nope, no sig