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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."
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.
Currently, only pilots made of balsa wood can fly this thing.
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.
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".
However, the challenge of achieving both efficient lift and thrust with flapping wings was far greater than simply using the wings for lift and providing thrust with a separate propulsor.
Isn't current technology all about brute forcing things? Efficiency takes time. It's easier to just throw power and money at a problem. Like the excellent example I saw somewhere about how Arches are more efficient, but most of our construction (except for bridges and the like) are based on stronger materials and shapes that aren't as likely to give us headaches.
Probably, but you never know... plus carftsmen of the past had shared secrets which got mostly lost over time (blame wars, plague, etc.) as how to build very light and yet solid structures out of wood (and eventually, stone). Think about european cathedrals. Most of them were made without any blueprint. That's truely wonderful. Re-building a working replica sometimes is the only way to go to get back that knowledge. I once saw a documentary on our Discovery channel's sibbling, about the making of a middle-age catapult. The first real life attempts broke themselves into pieces until they managed to understand archeological evidences and set all ratios back to what they once were, and then put the thing on wheels which were not used to carry the weapon around (as was unanimously beleived), but to handle the recoil. Then, they achieved pretty nice accuracy out of what was thought to be a primitive device.
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)
. . .are based on stronger materials and shapes that aren't as likely to give us headaches.
Or backaches. You can make an arched bed from a sheet of quarter inch plywood. Very efficient use of materials, but you aren't likely to want to sleep on it, and efficiency in materials is not the most important parameter of a bed.
Sometimes the shape itself is the most important factor. That's why domes never took off for personal housing. It's an efficient shape for everything but living in.
You'll note that cars, boats and airplanes all use the arch extensively (the panels on your car all have at least a slight curve to them for a reason), because in the case of these structures efficient use of materials is a critical factor.
And as it turns out seperate systems for thrust and lift in a flying machine are more efficient than using one system for both, that's why it's so hard to build an ornithopter and why aerotecnology didn't get "off the ground" until that was realized.
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."
A wheel on an axle is notoriously more efficient than these "legs" things.
KFG