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Flying Robot Bird Unveiled

Posted by samzenpus on from the getting-the-robot-worm dept.

mikejuk writes "Festo, well known for their biologically inspired robots, have a new creation called SmartBird. It is amazing to watch and all the more amazing when you realize that it flaps its wings and all of the control is via a torsion drive which twists the wings during each flap. The whole thing depends on the constant intervention of the software to keep it under control."

17 of 152 comments (clear)

  1. Possible military use: Instead of missile strike.. by JaydenT · · Score: 3, Funny

    ...targeted bird droppings.

  2. Wow, just wow. The uncanny valley extends .... by GNUALMAFUERTE · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Well beyond humanoids.

    It's so beautiful, interesting, and yet creepy in a way.

    Humanity's advances in certain areas (like robotics) are amazing. The sad part is that we are way ahead in certain areas, but way behind in other three key areas:

    a) Energy:

    We still have to crack the energy issue. We lack both reliable ways to gather energy, and reliable ways to store it.

    b) AI

    We are still in diapers in weak AI, and not even started in strong AI.

    c) Economy

    We are still based on the stupid principle of scarcity. Until we realize that we can produce as much as we need of just about anything, and that we are limiting ourselves by creating artificial scarcity to keep alive a system that's been dead for a long time, we won't make that breakthrough into what we thought the year 2000 was going to be.

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    1. Re:Wow, just wow. The uncanny valley extends .... by ghostdoc · · Score: 2

      I'm with Iain M Banks on this one. (to paraphrase:) Robots provide the how, humans provide the why.

      We're not far off having distributed manufacturing able to make shit for us for very low cost (almost free). But there's no way our current economic model can survive that. Given the amount of hassle we're dealing with because we can make copies of songs for free, what are we going to have to cope with when we can make copies of cars for free?

      --
      Business/App ideas are like arseholes: everyone's got one, they're mostly shit, but very rarely they contain a diamond
    2. Re:Wow, just wow. The uncanny valley extends .... by physicsphairy · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Humanity's advances in certain areas (like robotics) are amazing. The sad part is that we are way ahead in certain areas, but way behind in other three key areas:

      This is true, or not--it really is a matter of personal perspective. I myself think we are making fairly equitable process in terms of the limited resources we are splitting between all of our priorities:

      We are still in diapers in weak AI, and not even started in strong AI.

      Might as well be saying this in the year 1850 in respect to clockwork men. The human brain is not software so much as it is hardware, and modern transistor chips do not resemble it very well. I think our present level of AI is fairly suited to the sort of computers we are manufacturing. Get quantum computers (in which we are make quite excellent progress) up to where large chips are viable, and I think the code development of AI will be a few orders of magnitude more viable as well.

      We still have to crack the energy issue. We lack both reliable ways to gather energy, and reliable ways to store it.

      We can generate massive (nuclear) and store massive (dam) amounts of energy. Scaling it down becomes more troublesome. But the real issue is that it's easier to dream up ways to use energy than to produce it, due to troublesome and altogether uncircumventable laws of thermodynamics, which in one sense will always make us seem like we're lagging. Energy "does stuff," and we'll almost always want to "do as much stuff" as we can, which can always be translated into some kind of gain. Getting back to the AI issue: there are fundamental constraints on the the amount of computation that can be done per joule of energy expended. And will we ever be happy with the amount of computing we do? I don't think so. So, in that respect alone, we already have some desire for infinite energy, to say nothing of whatever finite supply we have at a given time.

      We are still based on the stupid principle of scarcity. Until we realize that we can produce as much as we need of just about anything, and that we are limiting ourselves by creating artificial scarcity to keep alive a system that's been dead for a long time, we won't make that breakthrough into what we thought the year 2000 was going to be.

      Humanity always produces as much as it needs. If not, people die and the equilibrium is re-established. It comes to producing as much as we want, and that, as given in one example, is pretty much limitless. Scarcity of resources in that respect is inevitable and the distribution of those resources is fairly well addressed by capitalism. I doubt there will be a better way to distribute them until our super-AI comes online to figure it all out for us. Until then, humans are provably terrible at guessing where resources should go by any means other than rational self-interest.

      --
      When things get complex, multiply by the complex conjugate.
    3. Re:Wow, just wow. The uncanny valley extends .... by drinkypoo · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Humanity always produces as much as it needs. If not, people die and the equilibrium is re-established.

      This is patently false. We are currently producing much more than we need, to the detriment of all.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
  3. Wow by JazzyMusicMan · · Score: 3, Insightful

    This is quite simply amazing. And even though it's not perfect, can you imagine the implications of this? Everything from weaponization to ornithology. Imagine being able to observe a flock of birds on a migratory route as part of the flock! It's really quite stunning.

  4. that is beautiful by j_l_larson · · Score: 2

    it fills me with joy. I wonder if other birds will attack it.

  5. What? No Feathers? by camperdave · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Why do no ornithopters employ feather analogs? They all have solid wings. Flight feathers form a check valve, letting air through the wing on the upstroke, and capturing it on the downstroke. This arrangement allows the bird to put a lot less energy into the upstroke (and thus not lose as much altitude). With a solid wing, you wind up pushing the craft down on the upstroke almost as much as you lift it on the downstroke.

    --
    When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
  6. It's just viral marketing for a remake by Lord_of_the_nerf · · Score: 2

    I'm surprised they let Uwe Boll rob Hitchcock's grave.

  7. Haven't you heard? by degeneratemonkey · · Score: 4, Informative

    About the word? Ba-ba-ba-... *ahem*... I, for one, welcome our new cybornithological overlords.

  8. Re:Forget Harrier Jump Jets by nedlohs · · Score: 2

    Really?

    I've never seen a bird break the sound barrier.

    Fighters already exceed the capability of the pilot in terms of maneveuring - it doesn't matter if you make the planes even better the pilot will still black out/die anyway.

  9. Re:Constant intervention of the software ... by Kilrah_il · · Score: 4, Funny

    And also, real bird also depend on constant intervention of the software, i.e brain. Usually when birds lose their heads, they stop flying. Or so I've heard.

    --
    Whenever in an argument, remember this.
  10. Re:What? No Feathers? by GonzoPhysicist · · Score: 2

    I'm not saying you're wrong,but the point of flapping is thrust not lift.

    --
    horror vacui
  11. Re:Birds have not evolved to handle unstable ... by Anynomous+Coward · · Score: 2

    I don't think so. Most of the 'stabilization hard- and software' of the birds is probably built-in into the autonomous neurological network, just like a human is able to walk/run/jump upright - which is inherently unstable - without having to consciuously micromanage all muscles that are involved.

    --
    I'm not a coward by any name.
  12. Re:What? No Feathers? by camperdave · · Score: 2

    I'm not saying you're wrong,but the point of flapping is thrust not lift.

    It's both, actually. However, a wing is probably not going to generate a lot of lift on the upstroke, so why pour a lot of energy into it? When you look at bird musculature, they have huge muscles for pulling the wing down, but for pulling it up - not so much.

    --
    When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
  13. Reminds me of the TIM flying bird windup toy by hunangarden · · Score: 2

    I watched the video, and it reminds me a lot of the Tim bird: http://www.amazon.com/Schylling-NTN-Tim-Bird/dp/B000ELORZO.

    Not to take away from what they've done, but it really does seem to fly like Tim. So basically the Tim toy with an electric motor instead of a wound up rubber band, and maybe remote control to help steer. Ok, granted it looks like the head moves but I wasn't blown away.

    Still its pretty cool, but I didn't see them do anything awesome. How about gliding? Seems pretty basic to me, flap, flap flap, glide like a real bird.

  14. Re:What? No Feathers? by DriedClexler · · Score: 2

    I'm not an expert on flapping-wing aircraft, but you can also acheive low drag on upstroke by rotating the wing so it has the lowest angle-of-attack, and then turning it back so it blocks the most wind on the downstroke.

    Birds, having been created by the blind idiot-god evolution, favored (in the appropriate non-intelligent sense) wings that didn't have to do such tricks -- like you say, with feathers, you need a relatively simple flapping motion because they automatically reduce profile on the upstroke and increase it on the downstroke.

    Whether the rotating option is better depends on the specifics of the system, and the designers probably found that they could get a better overall structure by not having feathers and optimizing for the no-feather case by having more complicated wing motion (and more complicated software to handle it).

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    Information theory is life. The rest is just the KL divergence.