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Flapping NAV Performs Controlled Hovering Flight
An anonymous reader writes "AeroVironment, Inc. was awarded a Phase II contract extension in April from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to design and build a flying prototype for the Nano Air Vehicle (NAV) program. As part of this program AV has accomplished a technical milestone never before achieved: the controlled hovering flight of an air vehicle system with two flapping wings (video) that carries its own energy source and uses only the flapping wings for propulsion and control. Two wings for propulsion and control, nothing else."
0 comments and it's already slashdotted.
...their website is being served off of the flapping bird robot, and said robot has crashed.
They can make flapping wing flying robots, but can't make a slashdot proof webserver, meh.
Authority questions you. Return the favor.
here's a link to another article which atleast has a computer generated image
-- It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it. -- Aristotle
Shouldn't this sort of thing be called an Ornithopter?
Drill baby drill - on Mars
People can't drive cars so now we give the same people flying cars...
They need to get one of those flapping NAV's to fan off their server and cool it down.
If I can not smoke in heaven, then I shall not go. -- Mark Twain
Here is an AeroVironment NAV video on YouTube. Not sure if it's the same one, but it was uploaded today...
Where's the Laserbeak tag? Or at least Lazerbeak, depending on which geek you ask.
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
Dear engineering community, that's all I've ever wanted from you in life, please make it happen.
fap fap fap
That's what singing meat sounds like, right?
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
This just in, Prototype lost to clock with bacteria digester system.
PETA responded with applause.
_ _ _ Go for the eyes Boo! GO FOR THE EYES!
it was pretty cool.
There will be hummingbird looking things flying in and out of your nearest neighborhood crime syndicate office monitoring their activities.
Who needs wiretapping now?
Oh, and I think hummingbirds have prior art.
Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.
BzZzZzzzZZzZz...
By man or something man-made perhaps. Now if you'll excuse me, my Hummingbird is bored...
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
To any familiar with this company or this line of research in general:
What are the advantages of the ornithopter design over a traditional helicopter design? Why is DARPA interested?
Yes, I did read the article... and I understand what DARPA is interested in getting out of a small UAV that can hover. What I don't understand is why a normal helicopter design couldn't suit all of these needs better and cheaper.
Regardless of the answer, it's a very cool project. Obviously very worthwhile just from the point-of-view of the scientific and engineering advances.
for war instead of health care.
Yours In Socialism,
Kilgore Trout
FTA, emphasis mine:
That's a tall order, though, for something under 10 grams. I wonder if it's necessary to have an active system to respond to wind gusts and auto-stabilize the flight, or if it's be possible via aerodynamics alone.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
What does this have to do with Norton Anti-Virus?
I was quoted out of context in my autobiography...
The part that got me was 10 meters per second. That seems pretty damn fast to me for something that small that beats its wings.
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
Pity nobody has thought of this before
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
and DARPA can play Quidditch.
Illegal to shoot birds and insects on sight? We have in some cities ordinances stating "DON'T FEED THE BIRDS/PIGEONS" due to trying to control vermin and bird droppings in public venues.
But, suppose building owners or overreacting individuals decide to "malathion" a bird they think is a spy vehicle?
Well, one way to deal with these things is to put sticky glue traps (mean to cat rodents) all over the place. Or, periodically "mist" the air with soap or sticky/bubbly shit to down them. Or, where there may be perches, set up IR lasing beams to jam them (-- if you can figure out the ops/coms freqs) or IR lasing or kill them when they land or get too close. Surely, they'll be landed for energy conservation reasons.
Or, set up mirrors in the buildings so they crash into them or get stuck and the operators cannot figure the way out. When they get too close to vortavacs, suck their asses into a disposal chute.
Diabolical, or what?
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
> Two wings for propulsion and control, nothing else.
(emphasis mine)
Even hummingbirds have tails. A bee might be a better example, but they have four wings, as do butterflies.
That's about 22 miles per hour, or a little slower than a hummingbird. Which is indeed pretty impressive.
The enemies of Democracy are
Does anyone else have the nagging urge to whack that thing across the room with a crowbar?
This is almost as good as WowWee's Bat and Dragon. They're little, they fly with moving wings, and they can hover. $39.99. Available wherever toys are sold. That's the entry-level product; the next step up, the Green Dragonfly, is an indoor/outdoor R/C ornithopter capable of hovering.
Those models doesn't have any onboard intelligence, but some of the other WowWee flying machines have collision avoidance. WowWee has a whole line of flying and robotic toys, and they deliver impressive technology at prices well under $100. Maybe DARPA should outsource.
There are commercial helicopter-design UAVs weighing 15g that achieve that... about the size of a pack of cigarettes.
So this would be competitive with that in terms of speed.
Given that there are natural flapping-wing "designs" that achieve 25 M/s at a weight of 2.5 g (some hummingbirds), there's no reason why we shouldn't set a goal of 10 M/s at 10 g.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
>> Flapping NAV Performs Controlled Hovering Flight
da Vinci... is that you?
-- I was raised on the command line, bitch
What's up with my stupid typos today?
That should be 15 M/s at a weight of 2.5 g.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
It depends on what withstand means. I've watched lots of dragonflies (and other insects) fly around in stronger winds than that, gusts too. If they mean stay in the air and mostly on course, it should at least be possible, if they mean stay in one place, probably not.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
Actually compared to the small helicopters that I've tried, being able to fly in 5 mph wind would be quite nice. These things get seriously screwed up with a very slight breeze (I'm guessing well under 5 mph, though I'm not certain). The air coming out of my heater vent near the ceiling nearly crashes it from across the room, where I can't even feel the air anymore.
Perhaps developments like this were the reason the Star Wars Program was miniaturized. Protecting us from "mosquitos" sure sounds like a good cover story.
FreeBSD.org - The power to serve
African or European vulture? You have to know these things when you're King.
Still it's quite impressive what they have today. "Withstand 2.5 m/s wind gusts" does not mean their ornithopter explodes if the wind exceeds that. It just means that above 2.5 m/s it will have to "go with the flow", and thus will lose a part of it's mobility. It can still control it's speed in 3 other directions though.
I have the impression that birds regularly hit this limit. They try to go against the wind, and it proves too much for them. They simply land and try again 5 seconds later, which usually succeeds.
So the 2.5 m/s wind limit could be quite acceptable, even for outdoor flight. Assuming it can land like a bird (ie. everywhere).
I do see one big problem these devices will have to contend with : Cats (perhaps not the lolcat variant, the regular one). So if you want to secure your house from these spying devices ... buy a cat. Birds, after 3 million years of evolution still haven't quite figured out how to protect themselves against cats, so it seems unlikely these guys will find it in the next month.
> ...their website is being served off of the fapping bird robot, and said robot has crashed.
Fortunately, youtube is crash proof:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cov7-XWUa18
Take up falconry.
Last I heard, dragonflies can dart up to 70MPH. And they weigh prettly close to nothing. Not sure how fast they can go sustained though.
The first rule of getting funding: Create a new name for something
It's not a border 'fence', it's a 'migration denial system' :P Fences cost nickels and dimes, but 'migration denial systems' cost -billions-.
We have the same problem in the AI industry. 'AI' is always something in the future, something unobtainable, and actual intelligence systems in use end up being called something else entirely. People used to say if you could make a system that beats humans in chess that would be 'AI', but we have that and it's clearly not. But the reason is that our assumption of what it would take to beat a human at chess was wrong in the first place.
When true (humanoid soldier-replacement) battlefield robots come along, they won't be called mere 'robots', and they certainly won't be 'terminators'; they'll be something like 'Autonomous Infantry Units' or some clever acronym that spells out 'R.O.B.O.T.', perhaps "R-O-ving B-attlefield aut-O-nomous... T-erminator?' ...Okay, I just had to slip 'Terminator' in there somewhere :P Couldn't think of a T-word.
I dunno, the military regularly comes up with some pretty clever acronyms from projects and products--one begins to think they must have paid consultants who managed to leverage a lifetime of crossword-puzzle experience into a military career making up these things, sitting around a desk somewhere staring at some name and cramming relevant adjective/noun combos at it.
The continued focus on robotic and autonomous systems is part and symptom of a larger demographic shift happening worldwide, and increasing in scale: declining population and its effects (not to mention the political cost of soldier's lives being lost).
Overpopulation is a non-issue. All population growth will halt and decline in the future and begin to shrink in time, bringing new problems to societies and demanding new solutions. I think the best way to answer that challenge is to solve the Artificial Intelligence problem in the next 20 years and use machine-intelligence equal to our own to address labor shortages before populations decline so much that it puts massive hurt on our economies. This will make things like menial labor and grunt-work possible for robots to do for us (until they're sophisticated enough to do more important thinking jobs). Then soldiers also can be augmented by robot groups, making defense less costly in human lives.
This inevitably trickles down into society. We will have robotic maids and caretakers whom can actually hold a human-like conversation and understand you, as well as automatically check your vitals and alert emergency services (will be desperately needed when the baby boomers retire en masse in about 2020). We will have police officers backed up by a host of eyes-on robots and support systems (and possibly impenetrable exoskeletons, woo!). We'll have cars that can drive those no longer capable of driving safely, cook their food, clean up their houses, etc. Japan is on the forefront of these robotic technologies, and may even be ahead of us in some areas. Japan is very culturally friendly to the concept, first of all. They would love nothing more than to have robotic pets and workers. And they're also facing a worse demographic shift in population than we are (also true for other 1st world countries compared to America, eg: much of Europe).
For that reason, I applaud this work. Who knows what future applications are possible. One day there may be NAV's kept in reserve in neighborhoods across America, like bird-houses for tiny robtos--only seconds away when someone dials 911. Emergency services will have eyes on-scene almost instantly. This will also improve police-work and crime-prevention.
And, yes, my scifi novel incorporating some of these ideas (and much more) is in fact currently in the works :)
"I Don't Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist"
I wonder, why the "wings" flap horizontally instead of vertically. Looks like except for the flapping part, it has nothing to do with how birds fly, but instead is just using uplift like traditional plane wings, but moves the wings quickly trough air for an added effect. This thing could not glide for example.
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
tazers.
This thing + tiny video camera = free amateur porn!