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First Human-Powered Ornithopter
spasm writes "A University of Toronto engineering graduate student has made and successfully flown a human-powered flapping-wing aircraft. From the article: 'Todd Reichert, a PhD candidate at the university's Institute of Aerospace Studies, piloted the wing-flapping aircraft, sustaining both altitude and airspeed for 19.3 seconds and covering a distance of 145 metres at an average speed of 25.6 kilometres per hour.'"
Must flow.
Just in time for Yueh to leave us a pair of stillsuits in the back. The article doesn't mention if it's big enough to lift a spice harvester however.
Oh a million deaths are not enough for Yueh!
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
The article doesn't make it clear that the aircraft still needs to be pulled for it to glide into the air (you can see this in the attached video). I was under the impression that it took off like a bird. The "flapping" of the wings is really cool to see though, once the craft gets airborne.
Either way, really neat.
Vivin Suresh Paliath
http://vivin.net
I like
To put off writing their thesis.
Because you can. Because you want to. Just to show it can be done?
Vivin Suresh Paliath
http://vivin.net
I like
Speaking as this guy's former roommate, one of the draws for him was that the aerodynamics and mechanics of flapping wing flight was not fully understood.
The science here is understanding aerodynamics to the point that a human-scaled device can be built.
Human-powered ornithopters? Sounds like Dune meets the Flintstones!
Atreides, Paul Atreides
He's the greatest man in history
On the planet Arrakis
He'll kill Harkonnen and make the Fremen free
There you go, it ain't much, but then again creativity is a pretty expensive and scarce commodity.
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
So it gets towed to 20 feet and flaps a few times until it settles back to the ground. Flight? At least tow it to a certain height and flap to a higher altitude.
What doesn't kill you only delays the inevitable
Beyond the other answers, anything that can be powered by a human can be powered even better by a small inexpensive engine. This could easily result in an inexpensive personal recreational aircraft. Think Ultralights. Regardless, pure science is pure science. Even if this particular application never results in anything, he surely had to solve problems and understand principles that no one has ever worked out before. Parts of that research will have value somewhere.
I don't need a million points of light, just two points of multi-mode fiber and a 10 Gig-E router.
Potential Customer: Ryanair.
This is not even close to the first human powered ornithopter. One of the most significant recent attempts is Yves Rousseau who crashed and became a paraplegic as a result of one of his flights.
This is the FIRST FLIGHT of the FIRST PROTOTYPE built by a college student who further chose to pilot it himself rather than hiring a professional athlete (although he did train and even lose weight). If the first prototype of a software application you wrote in school was more impressive than that, we would love to hear of it. Otherwise tone down the skepticism. One day people might fly this as a sports/hobby thing after being boosted by a friend or a ski lift-type thingy or it would be a cool spy gadget you can assemble from your backpack. Add a two person model or a very small motor to supplement human power and it becomes vastly more practical.
Besides the "gee-whiz" factor, why is time being spent on this sort of research? Will any flapping-wing aircraft ever be as efficient as a modern jumbo-jet for transporting large loads of cargo and people? I'm no aerospace engineer, and I'm not saying that a jet is the model of efficiency, but I don't see how a flappy wing mode of transport would be better.
Seriously, dude, if you ask questions like this, Slashdot is probably not the place for you.
P.S. Cynicism does not necessarily make you appear wise.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Tell me how to build a full scale ornithopter that has room for a full wing-flap while grounded and still weighs little enough to get airborne, otherwise I'm just not impressed with your disappointment.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
This is going to be vital technology for the new NSA/FBI/CIA robo-swallow assassins. Previously we were limited to a very specific payload based on the geographic region in which the swallow originated.
This is merely a glider, nothing more. The up-flap cancels out the down-flap as the wings appear to move vertically. All winged animals I'm aware of either twist their wings at angles or fold them, especially on the up-flap, so that most of the powered force is directed to pushing air under the wings on the down flap and the wing simply cuts through the air on the up flap.
from 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
to 45 2F 6E 40 3C DF 10 71 4E 41 DF AA 25 7D 31 3F
Do you remember when, back in the day, you could write or say anything about anything, no matter how uninformed you were, and if you communicated authoritatively enough, your audience would just eat it up with a spoon and not question you? Yeah, we have the Internet now.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human-powered_transport
In the 1989 Race Across America, one team (Team Strawberry) [1] used an experimental device that consisted of a rear wheel hub, a sensor and a handlebar mounted processor. The device measured each cyclist's power output in watts. In lab experiments an average "in-shape" cyclist can produce about 3 watts/kg for more than an hour (e.g., around 200 watts for a 70 kg rider), with top amateurs producing 5 watts/kg and elite athletes achieving 6 watts/kg for similar lengths of time. Elite track sprint cyclists are able to attain an instantaneous maximum output of around 2,000 watts, or in excess of 25 watts/kg; elite road cyclists may produce 1,600 to 1,700 watts as an instantaneous maximum in their burst to the finish line at the end of a five-hour long road race.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
I looked at all the videos available for the flight. It is obvious that the flapping is maintaining flight - if he just started gliding at the release point, there is no way the flight would have been as long. This is probably the best view, and it also lets you hear what this thing sounds like when it flaps.
I need trepanation like I need a hole in the head.
In order to win the Ornithopter X-Prize, you need to flap and stay in the air long enough to drop your pants, and take a crap on a car windshield.
Now that would really prove that man can build a machine that enables man to emulate bird behavior.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
What I want to know is why it's always college kids who are doing the cool stuff in /. stories. It really sends the wrong message that centers of elitist liberal brainwashing are somehow related to innovation when we all know that it's the hardworking, individualistic, ambitious types upon whom all progress depends.
consider that most birds do give themselves a first start with their legs rather then wings. Hell, the swan basically runs like crazy before getting of the ground. And iirc, the wright brothers flier was pulled along a rail using a weight and pulley system to get enough speed. But once up to speed, the motorcycle engine was enough to keep it up there unless the pilot did something crazy.
comment first, facts later. http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm
Speaking as this guy's former roommate, one of the draws for him was that the aerodynamics and mechanics of flapping wing flight was not fully understood.
The science here is understanding aerodynamics to the point that a human-scaled device can be built.
I would like to see his paintings.
The Admin and the Engineer
Dude, stop propagating an urban legend originated in 1934. Nobody said that bees can't fly, they said that an airplane wing traveling at the speed of a bee can't fly. Airplane wings needed more laminar air flow to generate lift according to Bernoulli's principle, and that means more forward speed to generate the minimal air flow than a bee displays in it's forward flight.
Then the anti-science crowd then created a misinterpretation of this famous statement to read that "according to Science, bees can't fly" so it must be "God's work." Later it was softened to "According to science, bees can't fly so we don't know everything."
It doesn't take a lot of insight to imagine how flapping a wing can sustain slower air speeds than a fixed wing aircraft could sustain. But the original findings have been so misused, that using the quote is paramount to spreading anti-Science propaganda.
...we've had flapping-wing aircraft for three-quarters of a century.
Birds flap their wings with a painfully inefficient reciprocating motion, because nature doesn't know how to make one critical component: a rotating joint. We do, so our wing-flappers flap their wings with nice, efficient rotary motion...and we call them helicopters.
rj
Also because it's a 0/2 flying artifact for 0 colorless mana.
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Ask me about repetitive DNA
Bees would violate the laws of aerodynamics for fixed wing airplanes. Fortunately for them they operate more like a helicopter and get more sufficient lift by beating their wings. Do people still seriously believe this?
Speaking as someone with experience with Helicopters. Designing those damned things is more an art that is reinforced by scientific knowledge. There are a lot of things about rotor aircraft that until recently have been way too complex to model. So in a manner of speaking, we did not know the aerodynamics of bees if you set your definition of know to be an exhaustive knowledge of the physics.
A rotor spinning in place you could model, but add in any bit of wind current and motion and it became an aerodynamic mess.
Out of modpoints but really liked a post? 1BDkF6TtmmeZ3yqXbz9yhdYVqRYnwFoXDj
...falling, with style. You might go so far as to call it a toy, just don't tell him that. He thinks he's going to save the universe.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Someone once said that helicopters fly because they are so ugly the ground repels them.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
A popular military joke is that the CH-47 Chinook doesn't fly, it just beats the air into submission.
Human powered flight will be necessary in the future because not everyone has oil and most people won't have access to petrochemicals to power their planes. However, flight consists of 3 aspects: take off, mid-flight manuevering, and landing safely
You forgot to mention useful, meaningful, range, payload and altitude.
The MIT Daedalus managed 71 miles over calm spring Mediterranean waters at 15 to 30 feet.
The Daedalus had its fleet of marine escorts.
But the fundamental reason for building an aircraft is to navigate over terrain - to be truly and freely airborne under ordinary conditions of wind and weather.
There are a lot of things about rotor aircraft that until recently have been way too complex to model.
How recently? Are we due for a big advance in rotorcraft in the near future due to new understanding, or is this a "we finally know why aspirin works" kind of discovery?
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Nah, olympic level cyclists can generate up to 2000 watts for brief periods and elite level road cyclists over 400 watts for periods up to an hour.
I do actually hop im a glider and use various forms of lift to maintain flight.
Famous glider pilot and designer Paul McReady
desigend the aircraft below.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gossamer_Albatross
This was the most sucessful attempt at a human powered aircraft. It required 400w to maintain level flight. Powered by pdeals and a propellor,
it would be significantly more efficient than a wing flapping system, which produces large vorticies.
It was very fragile to acheive its 100KG auw and an encounter with even mild turbulance would have destroyed it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_power
tells the story nicely.
Neither will denying facts make them false. You can blindly deny our incomplete knowledge all you want, but it makes you look like the idiot...
Okay, how's this:
"the performance of insect wings, when tested under steady conditions in wind tunnels, is too low to account for the forces required to sustain flight"
It is only in the past few years that the fact that "flapping wings generate additional forces during stroke reversals." was determined as a solution to the problem.
"the source of extra lift remains unknown." ... "An intense leading-edge vortex was found on the down-stroke, of sufficient strength to explain the high-lift forces. The vortex is created by dynamic stall, and not by the rotational lift mechanisms that have been postulated for insect flight"
It's easy to recognize that something doesn't add-up. That's worlds away from having a plausibly-complete understanding of exactly how it DOES in fact work. Einstein certainly knew where General Relativity broke down, but he wasn't able to come up with a solution for it, and he had well more than "2 hours with a paper and pencil".
I see now it's not in-fact hindsight in your case, but unadulterated ignorance, which just happens to be pro-(omnipotent)-scientists rather than the more common opposite. I suppose you'd have been claiming we had a complete understanding of insect flight 15+ years ago, when there were many fundamental blanks in the equations. I'm sorry I wasted my time.
If you or anyone else are interested in the topic and would like to edify themselves rather than blindly tear-down others, here are a couple jumping-off points:
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v384/n6610/abs/384626a0.html
http://www.pnas.org/content/102/50/18213.full
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2008-03/uosc-lev030108.php
http://discovermagazine.com/2000/apr/featphysics
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/306/5703/1960
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
That link is an interesting read. His back-of-the-envelope calculation normalizes a Boeing 747 to just slightly less efficient than the Grey-Cheeked Thrush: 4.79 watts to 4.5. He's right that no one would want to fly an airliner at 31mph, however 1 or 2 people flapping to work at 31mph could someday be highly attractive over driving a car.
Is it a rule, that there's an exception to every rule?