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Festo's Drone Dragonfly Takes To the Air
yyzmcleod writes "Building on the work of last year's bionic creation, the Smart Bird, Festo announced that it will literally launch its latest creation, the BionicOpter, at Hannover Messe in April. With a wingspan of 63 cm and weighing in at 175 grams, the robotic dragonfly mimics all forms of flight as its natural counterpart, including hover, glide and maneuvering in all directions. This is made possible, the company says, by the BionicOpter's ability to move each of its four wings independently, as well as control their amplitude, frequency and angle of attack. Including its actuated head and body, the robot exhibits 13 degrees of freedom, which allows it to rapidly accelerate, decelerate, turn and fly backwards."
to overthrow the government. The chairman better watch his back....
Who am I supposed to contact to whine about the new vote up/down buttons on stories? I was under the impression /. users voted on stores before they got to the main page. If I wanted Reddit, I'd be reading Reddit.
Where is Slashdot's change log for the new features it tries to implement?
lemme know when they got the bee robot from the richie rich movie.
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
/dev/null
I was under the impression that a control system implies a closed loop or feedback mechanism i.e. a system that measures the current state, and decides an actuation mechanism to get to where it wants to go. Do they mean autonomous and non-autonomous modes instead?
Patent trolls take note - 40 year old prior art.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
You of course meant the /dev/zero.
/dev/null is only good for writing into.
All hope abandon ye who enter here.
it's made out of Lego.
I think they mean a negative force of acceleration.
Very nice. Festo, which is a German industrial robotics firm, does a technical tour de force every year. They built a robotic bird two years ago. In 2009, they built a robot penguin" which swims beautifully.
Festo does this to sell their industrial robotics systems, which are very well made.
Bug-A-Salt
While angle of attack is accurate in describing rotor action, it's more commonly used to describe the angle at which a craft's nose cuts into the wind to offset the angle of sideslip in determine a heading. Collective pitch is the more commonly used term for the angle at which a rotor blade is set to provide downward or upward pitch in descriptions of airscrews and helicopters.
The vast majority of flying robots in operation around the world are now military or police, and are either equipped with weaponry or surveillance gear. We're all getting used to the idea that whenever a flying robot comes into view, you should hide. Since this one can go forwards or backwards, it should have a poisoned spike on the end of the tail and a poison dart blowgun mounted on the front.
13 Degrees Of Freedom - great name for a band
63cm wingspan? I don't know where this inventor is from, but I've never seen a live dragonfly with a wingspan anywhere near that.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
it's *when*!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meganeura
I read that book in my childhood - great to see it finally come to real life!
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/727375.Danny_Dunn_Invisible_Boy
Makes me shudder to think how many other sci-fi stories from childhood will come to real life.
Much smaller though. But very impressive never the less, considering the available technology at that time.
http://www.engadget.com/2012/07/30/cia-dragonfly-drone-uavs-40-years/
It doesn't seem like that big an improvement on the Wowee Dragonfly from 6+ years ago. Maybe a tad more stable and definitely bigger, but it still seems quite awkward. (Probably need to figure out how to do the proper figure-8 wing flap motion from real insects before a significant improvement is seen. Might also need something lighter to drive the wings in a more responsive way like a countersprung linear actuator rather than gear drives.)
...and I'll rule the frickin world.
The Russians have won. They have made the world a cesspool of distrust, greed, fear and hate.
It should be noted that while helicopters can do all of these things, it really isn't that good at it. Hovering is actually quite a stress inducing activity, and most helicopters will completely avoid this as much as possible. This could in theory create a viable alternative that could be run with a simple up/down, turn, and movement interface.
/dev/null is only good for writing into.
Yes, thus answering the question "Who am I supposed to contact to whine about the new vote up/down buttons on stories?".
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
I want to think this is really cool, but in a way, the video was just plain creepy. Made me think of a kickstarter company to make bigger fly-swatters.
"With a wingspan of 63 cm and weighing in at 175 grams..."
Would it not just be blown all over the place?
2 ft seems like a rather large dragonfly...
...a German industrial robotics firm, does a technical tour de force every year.
It's interesting that what you call a technical tour de force, I call a mildly interesting R/C model aircraft of little technical value and no practical use.
THIS is why he's doing it & proof of it, here -> http://interviews.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3585927&cid=43295193 when others pointed out Jeremiah Cornelius forgot to submit one of the "first post spams" masquerading as myself as AC, & mistakenly submitted one of the impersonations of myself as his registered 'luser' name here on /. forums.
Pretty pitiful actually, but like every up to no good idiot does? He screwed up & submitted it under his registered 'luser' name here, instead of his ac submittals he's been doing.
* Jeremiah Cornelius: DO YOURSELF, and the rest of us, A GIANT FAVOR MAN: Seek professional psychiatric help!
(Since Jeremiah Cornelius obviously can't get over the fact he made a spelling error on what it is HE ALLEGEDLY DID FOR A LIVING? That's not MY fault... it's HIS!)
APK
P.S.=> I seriously must have dusted JC (in his mind @ least) for his BAD spelling error & it "got his goat"...
I.E.-> Catching what he claimed to do as a job, for YEARS he left "PENETRATION" (correct) spelled as "PENTRATION" (incorrect) on his resume on LinkedIn & I pointed it out as he & his friends trolled me as usual (webmistressrachel, gmhowell, & crew (probably ALL JC no doubt using alterate emails or TOR to do it as a possible - I've caught "them & theirs" doing it before, ala Barbara, not Barbie = TomHudson (same person))).
So THAT is what has gotten his goat in a technical debate & his "geek angst" could only come up with *trying* to "impersonate me" in every news thread on /. for the month of March 2013 so far!
(Just to attempt to 'discredit me' as a spammer here obviously)
Doing so, by posting that "$10,000 challenge" &/or reposts of my old posts on hosts file value to end users into EVERY SINGLE NEWS ARTICLE POSTED on /. ...
It's all I can think of that *might* cause such a mentally troubled 'reaction' like the Jeremiah Cornelius is doing & there's NO QUESTION he's the one doing this spamming of nearly every posted article masquerading as myself...!
... apk