Slashdot Mirror
Studies In Ornithopters
weileong writes "This should be of especial interest to fans of Frank Herbert's Dune (or maybe only those who preferred House Atreides) - a genuine, flexible, flapping-capable winged aircraft (by which I don't mean passenger-carrying. Yet.) has been produced by the University of Toronto's Institute for Aerospace Studies and SRI International (Washington Post article, free reg required). Advantages include everything from low speed control to efficiency. Once these things really hit "real world" usage, the V-22 Osprey really HAS no reason to exist (and all the army personnel at risk of dying in one should rejoice)."
Any man made material exposed that kind of movement is going develop weaknesses (stress cracks) over time. I can see this usefull on a micro level, but to actually carry passengers ...
Once these things really hit "real world" usage, the V-22 Osprey really HAS no reason to exist (and all the army personnel at risk of dying in one should rejoice)."
You're assuming that a military ornithopter transport would be safer than the Osprey. A bit of a leap of faith seeing as it hasn't even got past the university project stage.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
How come stories about cool things like this never have any pictures?? I really want to see the little machine!
Googling...
Could this be it?
Martin
Is there a way to mod the last half of this article -1 offtopic? Training and testing accidents are the norm for any new plane or helicopter, especially something as innovative as the Osprey. Look at how many people died to make the Harrier. A google search for Harrier deaths will reveal plenty of evidence if you don't believe me. I'm sure plenty will die trying to get ornithopters off the ground (if they ever get built).
he might have noted that there are no plans to build larger versions of these things. The entire point is small "insect sized" spy drones.
Various small ornithopers have been built. You can even buy toy windup versions. In small sizes they work.
They do not scale. There is no known way to make them scale. Neither the physics nor the engineering support the idea of producing large amounts of lift be rapidly anad violently flapping around large inertial masses.
Not to mention the fact that in the large scale the problem has been solved already with the rotating wing.
I haven't a clue how thousands of pounds of rapidly flapping metal could be deemed to be potentially safer than the Osprey, particulary given the sorts of mechanisms that would be required to drive them.
KFG
And the ornithopter, being a different design, clearly will not have this fault.
I'm sorry , but just as wheels are far more efficient running along smooth roads and rails than any combination of legs would be then
flight using fixed wings wings far more efficient than flapping for the sort of aircraft capable of carrying people or cargo. People should bear in mind
that just because nature comes up with a particular solution does NOT mean its the best one. Wings only exist in nature because continuous rotary motion using vertibrate
muscle - bone structure is simply impossible therefor the next best thing evolved - backwards and forwards motion of wings. Evolution comes up with the "good enough" solution , not the best.
GL
The article was crystal clear on this.
Quote: "Mentor came into being in response to a vision of a "fly-on-the-wall spy"
Quote: "stealth "micro-air vehicles"
Quote: "Flapping wings offer several advantages over the fixed wings of today's reconnaissance drones"
Quote: "long toyed with many scenarios, including one in which soldiers would deploy a swarm of camera-equipped robotic insects to probe inaccessible terrain."
Quote: "... ah, the hell with it! Go ahead and talk about your flying cars as long as you like.
Is it fascism yet?
No need for the V22? Hardly.
Come on, give the submitter a break. They did say when orithopters hit the "real world", V22s wouldn't be needed.
Yeah, 500 years in the future when micro-fusion produces the massive amounts of energy needed to drive an ornithopter capable of hauling 22 fully loaded marines, when we spin nano-tech fibers strong enough to withstand the vibrations yet light enough to beat without huge inertia... yes, by then there'll be no need for a 490 year old v22 fleet.
-- If god wanted me to have a sig, he'd have given me a sense of humor.
The Avro Arrow was a plane produced by Canada that was years ahead of its time. Unfortunately, because of the immense pressure from the U.S. (they didn't want Canada to sell the technology to other countries), the project got shut down.
From the article you linked to:
As costs rose, other divisions of the armed forces saw their own budgets cut, and even groups inside the RCAF in charge of European operations were worried that there would be no money left over for a new tactical fighter needed there. In-fighting soon reached the top of the military. In August 1958 the CSC advised the government to cancel the Arrow, and buy two Bomarc and 100 interceptors from the US, as well as constructing two SAGE control installations in Canada.
The Avro Arrow was an interceptor designed at a time when everybody else was shifting to missles for anti-bomber defense. The plane's expense threatened funding for other programs, so it was killed in budgetary battles.
Then there's this:
The US is also often blamed for the demise, often with claims that the US aerospace industry was upset about the 'upstarts' in Canada that were making them look foolish, or alternately that they were hunting for Avro employees. A cursory examination of the historical record shows the falsity of this claim. Quite to the contratry, the US military was distressed at the prospect of losing a first-rate staff in their own North American ally, and even considered buying 50 Arrows to give back to the RCAF in order to ensure production.
I know it's fashionable to blame the Americans for everything. Don't get me wrong, I find it quite entertaining. But you shouldn't be too quick to rule out the Freemasons or the Illuminati, or perhaps even something so mundane as internal politics.
I don't know who the flaming moron is who wrote this article, but they are woefully ignorant of...my god, they're just woefull ignorant.
For starters, the US Army does not have any personnel at risk from the V-22 Osprey, because the US Army is forbidden by Congressional Mandate from operating fixed-wing aircraft. The US Marine Corps is spearheading the operational deployment of the Osprey. Also, the US Navy and Air Force are evaluating prototypes.
The next idiocy is the implication (likely based in outright aviation ignorance) that the V-22 is at all an unsafe aircraft, or even more outlandish - that an untested and infinitely more complex aircraft design is going to be safer. The V-22 Osprey has an outstanding record for a fixed-wing VSTOL aircraft, and considering it is a new type of VSTOL (of which none have every peen deployed, and only a small series of research prototypes have been based on), it is without saying that thus far the aircraft has peformed very well.
That one insipid litany of ignorance ruined what would have otherwise been a decent article - except that really, Slashdot has been going down the tubes when it comes to "quality" articles for a while now. If you get that many submissions in a day, you'd think you could weed out the pedestrian ones like this, or at least trim the fat off the meat.
Some grip on reality is needed here. Especially for any article with a quote like, "It dawned on me that the key to survival and victory in today's battlefield is information," said Garcia That pearl of wisdom has been around in written form since Sun Tzu so what vaccuum has this person been working in? That aside look at the various conceptual flaws in the article.
"nature can provide ready-made solutions." is a comment made in many fields including computer science. The problem is that nature developed solutions for a carbon based lifeform. Imitations in silicon, steel, polymers cannot hope to achieve the same results. Flocks of birds do fly but they also eat and their cells reproduce and die. Steel and silicon simply dissipate energy (with nothing close to a Krebs cycle for renewal) and wear out (since repair or replacement of steel or silicon is hideously demanding of energy). So on a very fundamental level, solutions found in nature do not completely translate to the current materials of technology. You can get aspects of them, like the imitation of flapping flight, but not the whole package.
But lest you think, "Fine. We'll go with _some_ of the benefits." Think: what are they? The article says Flapping wings allow insects and birds to fly at low speeds, hover, make sharp turns and even fly backward. The latter cite trying to imitate a hummingbird's flight. A hummingbird's flight can already be imitated by helicopters and even the V-22 Osprey. But both the helicopter and the Osprey achieve the desired result (within bounds dictated by inertia and thrust-to-weight ratios) with a structure evolved for maximum efficiency given the materials i.e. the propeller. Even if you are utterly fanatic and feel that flapping is the way to go, consider further the imitation of a hummingbird. The birds virtually eat constantly. In fact, you could argue that the researchers haven't looked to nature very closely for their solutions. Even if you could translate the physical properties of a hummingbird to a machine, nature itself demonstrates that the energy requirements are huge for that type of flight. At least the researchers acknowledge this at the end of the article but the impression is more that it is an afterthought rather than an evident truth even before the research had started.
And is the flapping flight really the goal of ornithopters in this article? In this article it's a flock of small, lightweight robots hovering over Martian land rovers and guiding them to places of interest that seems to be the pitch. So what advantage do ornithopters have over other "eye in the sky" objects like helicopters, blimps, gliders, or high power satellite cameras? There don't seem to be any.
At this point one might even ask, how appropriate is a solution inspired by nature (on Earth) to the environment on Mars? Environments on Earth that are similar to Mars don't have an abundance of life because there isn't much to support the energy requirements of life. Therefore a solution based on "nature" is arguably inappropriate.
And finally, Mars exploration has top priority at the CSA. Sorry but Canada officially bowed out of its option to participate in the Mars exploration program via lack of federal funding. Maybe some Canadian companies will keep their hand in without the CSA but odds are NASA will buy American, and why not?
(As for the submitter's comments, let's put on our thinking caps people. What kind of ride would people in the hull of a flapping aircraft get? Replacement for the Osprey indeed!)
"Consensus" in science is _always_ a political construct.