Slashdot Mirror
Da Vinci's Ornithopter Prepares For a Test Flight
Dirak writes "Over 500 years ago, Leonardo da Vinci conceptualized a self-powered flying machine that would achieve both lift and thrust with flapping wings alone and named it the "ornithopter". Hot on the heels of the 100th Anniversary of the Wright Brothers flight, and the recent X prize, a team of scientists from University of Toronto's Institute for Aerospace have taken on this challenge to make Leonardo's dream a reality."
I remember reading the Dune series a while back and I had to pull out a dictionary to look up what an ornithopter was. Wouldn't current technoloy be a lot more efficient?
Wow, I'm actually rather shocked nobody's tried this before. It's a famous bit of trivia that da Vinci "invented" the helicopter, it was only a matter of time (~500 yrs) before somebody set his theories into practice.
this was my first encounter with an Orithopter. ;-)
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
"First things first -- but not necessarily in that order"
-- The Doctor, "Doctor
I remember seeing something on TV regarding old designs by such people as DV. The Scientists made a few design modifications and hey presto it failed... However when they went back to the original designs they found the the devices worked as intended by the designer. I also recall reading something of one such designer where; not wanting the devices to be used for "evil"; built a very simple but obvious design flaw in to each one. Sorry about being so vaugue
I can remember reading somewhere (probably in the "Da Vinci Code"-book) that he used to write down errors in his sketches on purpose. Is this what's causing problems when trying to realise his plans?
Leonardo did not invent this concept. Childern of the day had toy heleecopter like devices. He did, however, have many additional innovations that were remarkable. It is sad how his innovations in so many feilds are over shadowed by his atributed inventions.
I remember seeing a program talking about how insect flight is much more efficient than traditional methods... Something about the downstroke of the wing creating a vacume that pulls it back up.
Might have been another ether induced hallucination though... Ah Poppin Fresh...
The main interest in ornithopters today is in Micro Air Vehicles- small (~6 inches) military reconnaissance robots. Incidentally, the aerodynamics of flapping flight at small sizes are very different from those of aircraft. Insects use lots of weird mechanisms, such as the ability to generate high lift with leading edge vortices.
The expediency of the ornithopter model as it approaches efficiency will outperform fixed wing aircraft
Ideas borrowed from nature almost always bring about an improvement in performance. This article discusses how we can incorporate design ideas from nature and some ideas already borrowed , and thus portrays their superiority in general
Belive it or not, Ornithopter was used last year in pretty competitive decks. The fact that they've recently printed lands that also count as artifacts, lots of cheap artifacts and this monstrosity helps.
Yeah, I think ornithopters were mentioned one or two times in the Herbert novels too. Sad that most people relate to one of the great modern science fiction series by it's derivative works..
The problem as I see it is of mass versus power. It seems that as the size of the organizm is increased linearly the power required for propulsion is increased as a sqare or a cube of size increase. That is why a lot of mosquitos (or any small insects) fly and not too many elephants (large animals) do. If someone would simply resize a mosquito 100x its legs would break and won't even be able to hold its body weight let alone fly. That is why elephants have much thicker legs in proportion to their body as opposed to flies or mosquitos. Or even ostrages don't fly even though they have wings. The point is that humans seem to be just too big and heavy for flight. Our muscles are not strong enough support ourselves in flight. It's nice to dream though...
Ornithopter flight is neither more efficient nor mechanically simpler than traditional fixed wing flight. Producing lift using Newton's second law works, but not as efficiently as combining it with a principle of Bernoulli, as done with an airfoil. It also has obvious problems in crew comfort, due to massive vibrations in flight. Leonardo Da Vinci, in aviation historian circles is mostly known for sustaining the "spirit of flight" during his time, not for any practical engineering contributions. His aeronautical ideas were little more than flights of fancy, and the first real aeronautical engineer is considered to be Sir George Cayley.
And an engine does not "pull" an aircraft through the air... it propels the aircraft. There is no tensile force providing thrust; aftward mass flow and pressure differential accelerate the vehicle to oppose the drag force.
mnemonic_
It might be more maneuverable. I recently watched a documentary about migratory birds, and during the "making of" segment on the DVD, they explained that no existing airplane was maneuverable enough to follow some of the birds in flight. So they had to build their own specialized two-person ultralight.
One can imagine that more maneuverable aircraft could be very useful in the real world. You'd be able to maneuver them around in much tighter spaces and probably take off and land much more easily. This might make airplanes easier to fly and could make two-passenger commuter airplanes much more practical or something.
Also when they interviewed the professor, he was saying that a thopter could potentionally be much more manuverable then a traditional air plane, which was one of the reasons why he was building it.
-Derek
Treat me like a marketing stat, and I'll treat your movie like a series of ones and zeros
Maybe a little OT, but interestingly, he also designed a bicycle. Or rather, people tought so for some time. It turned out it was faked by one of the restorers back in the 1970's or so. A drawing and a little more info.
Z
Additionally, the manual that came with starter decks when I first started playing (circa 1995?) included a line on one of the last pages that said something to the effect of:
"Our sincere condolences to anyone who has been killed by an Ornithopter"
At that time, the hope of every black deck wielding mage was to get a dark ritual, 3 unholy strengths and an ornithopter first turn.
--trb