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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. ;-)
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they've final got around to starting
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Currently, only pilots made of balsa wood can fly this thing.
We have one of these toy ornithopters and it flies quite nicely. Its use of a leading-edge rigid spar and loose mylar wing material make the wing form a semi-efficient shape on both the up and down stroke.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
Why bother even casting it? Sure, it's 0 Mana, but it's still a 0/2 Flying Artifact. Give me a break. What are you gonna do? Enchant it? Oooh, don't hurt me.
Oh wait, you mean in real life. Ahhhh.... *whistling*
Small potatoes make the steak look bigger.
Pardon my engineering ignorance, but is this any more efficient than the current style of pulling a fixed-wing craft through the air with a separate engine? My gut instinct says no, but I've been suprised before. Thoughts?
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Back in September, they tried to make it work but it didn't get very far at all...
The proper name to use is "Leonardo", or "Leonardo Da Vinci", not "Da Vinci". That's like referring to someone as "of Dallas".
Yes, "modern" technology is more efficient, but this does a great deal to teach us about structural engineering in highly unconventional designs. I doubt Ornithopters will ever be popular (except maybe as a sideshow at larger fairs and airshows) but as a case study for engineers... It would be superb!
Engineers at schools, colleges and even some Universities tend to build "nice, safe" projects. Stuff that teaches you how to bolt things together - if you're lucky. A good project should be hard enough that engineers are going to fail at least once, because you learn far more by failing - and more again by catching problems before they turn into failure.
It is obvious now that Ornithopers are hard engineering problems. As such, even if they have no other value, they would make superb educational devices.
Inventions like this are never wasted - only opportunities can be wasted.
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)
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...
A television programme (I think it was entitled The DaVinci Challenge) aired on the Australian Special Broadcasting Service earlier this year, in which two teams built and tested DaVinci's ornothopter (and some other machines of his) using materials only available in Ol' Leo's time.
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
Wait till the Royal Canadian Air Force gets hold of this. It'll catapult them from the middle ages into the 15'th century.
Hmm... even if flapping wings are more effective than fixed wings, they can't scale too well or there would be more large flying things about, no?
They whose government reduces their essential liberties for temporary security, receive neither liberty nor security.
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...
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
If God intended creatures to fly, He would have given them flappy thingies to.. oh.. nevermind
(From the previous post...) "The reason nature has adopted the flapping wing is simply because it cannot emulate a shaft unidirctionally rotating in a bearing in a biological structure, so it had to make do."
Au contraire. Mother Nature is one hell of an engineer. I remember reading about the design of bacterial rotary flagellae in Scientific American a few years back, and marvelling at the elegance of the motor.
Here's an article from Wikipedia that describes it pretty well (excerpted below).
The filament is composed of the protein flagellin and is a hollow tube 20 nanometers thick. It is helical, and has a sharp bend just outside the outer membrane called the "hook" which allows the helix to point directly away from the cell. A shaft runs between the hook and the basal body, passing through protein rings in the cell's membranes that act as bearings.
The bacterijjkklellum is driven by a rotary engine composed of protein, located at the flagellum's anchor point on the inner cell membrane. The engine is powered by proton motive force, i.e., by the flow of protons across the bacterial cell membrane due to a concentration gradient set up by the cell's metabolism (in Vibrio species the motor is a sodium ion pump, rather than a proton pump). The rotor transports protons across the membrane, and is turned in the process. The rotor by itself can operate at 6,000 to 17,000 rpm, but with a filament attached usually only reaches 200 to 1000 rpm.
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
If anybody remembers the movie Birdy, there was a scene early in the movie where the main character lets a elastic powered ornithopter go in a class room. What an awesome site to see that little guy fly.
;]
If you have not seen the movie, I highly recommend it and the soundtrack is based on one of Peter Gabriels better albums.
Regarding UofT project, I hope these guy's succeed. I'm pretty sure that materials have gotten strong and light enough to enable full size models but... very very expensive! I hope they bring a parachute
From the FA..."However, until now, most attempts to fly by flapping wings, either using human muscle or mechanical power have failed." OK, argue "most" with me if you want, but..... There are readily available R/C kits that do just this. I am not talking about those stupid "TIM" birds that you wind up and they flap around like they are having a seizure, I mean a real "R/C ORNITHOPTER". Here is a link to videos of one of the MANY models available. http://www.jgrc.biz/en-us/pg_25.html While the full-size project is definately cool, I think they are overstating it a bit. This design HAS been made mechanically possible well before now.
Repant. Thy end is sheer.
I have a better idea. See I've made these wings out of wax. So far I've only had one problem with them . . . . :)