Man, every year the guys at Festo create some really interesting biomemetic stuff, but this bird is really incredible. In some of the far away shots I can almost believe it's a real bird. The bird is one pound with a two meter wing span and can actually fly by flapping its wings. Take-off, flight, and landing are all autonomous as well.
A real bird wouldn't have to flap its wings so much, but otherwise a pretty good effort at imitation.
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Given how many times Iran has claimed birds are being used as spies against it, going back to the 1990s, stuff like this makes me wonder if they don’t have grain of truth behind it. I don't imagine flight range is all is that good though.
"This cult of special forces is as sensible as to form a Royal Corps of Tree Climbers and say that no soldier who does not wear its green hat with a bunch of oak leaves stuck in it should be expected to climb a tree"
— Field Marshal William Slim 1956
Iran would've claimed that the west used seawater to spy on them. That's paranoia. Any machine that doesn't have the possibility to land in a small tight spot with pinpoint accuracy (a windowsill for example) wouldn't really be useful for surveillance.
Besides, that's 1990's and its 2011 and we're only being shown a toy which can hardly disguise itself as a real bird. Of course the military could have had better tech but somehow I can't imagine that a robobird in 1990's would be:
a) controllable from long ranges
b) being able to make its own decisions in case the uplink to the pilot goes dark (like current drones can safely go back to base on their own if the link is severed)
c) have enough range and manouverability to actually be useful.
Tolya wrote:Iran would've claimed that the west used seawater to spy on them. That's paranoia. Any machine that doesn't have the possibility to land in a small tight spot with pinpoint accuracy (a windowsill for example) wouldn't really be useful for surveillance.
Besides, that's 1990's and its 2011 and we're only being shown a toy which can hardly disguise itself as a real bird. Of course the military could have had better tech but somehow I can't imagine that a robobird in 1990's would be:
a) controllable from long ranges
b) being able to make its own decisions in case the uplink to the pilot goes dark (like current drones can safely go back to base on their own if the link is severed)
c) have enough range and manouverability to actually be useful.
Nah, I don't think so. The bird is cool though.
A and B wouldn't matter if the point was simply to make VERY low level passes over a nuclear facility collecting air samples or photographing license plates on cars. The main issue would be range, and having enough thrust to overcome the wind. Highly unlikely I am sure.
"This cult of special forces is as sensible as to form a Royal Corps of Tree Climbers and say that no soldier who does not wear its green hat with a bunch of oak leaves stuck in it should be expected to climb a tree"
— Field Marshal William Slim 1956
Very cool and very aesthetic application of existing technologies.
Am I the only one seeing one of those SmartBird, in an upgraded version with cameras and sensors, being used to monitor neighborhood were fixed security camera wouldn't do the job (like Brazilian favelas or American ghettos), or to monitor the area beyond the Israel-Palestine separation wall ? Give them some solar cells and they can stay in the sky 24/7.
Rabid wrote:Am I the only one seeing one of those SmartBird, in an upgraded version with cameras and sensors, being used to monitor neighborhood were fixed security camera wouldn't do the job (like Brazilian favelas or American ghettos), or to monitor the area beyond the Israel-Palestine separation wall ? Give them some solar cells and they can stay in the sky 24/7.
This design is a significant step forward, but is still very slow and vulnerable to wind and weather. Ornithopters have a theoretical energy efficiency advantage over propellors at this scale, essentially because they move more air at lower velocity, but the aerodynamic and mechanical complexity conspires to make current designs substantially less efficient (and more expensive to design and build) than conventional propellors. So yes, I would eventually expect to see a profileration of orthnithopter light UAVs, but not in the near future.
I very much doubt that you can get enough solar cells onto such a small top surface area to power the thing indefinitely. Then add the weight and power draw of a camera and transmitter? We are still a few years off from spy-pigeons in our streets.
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Hawkwings wrote:I very much doubt that you can get enough solar cells onto such a small top surface area to power the thing indefinitely.
Surface area is about 0.8 m^3, record efficiency for thin film solar cells is about 40%, insolation on a nothern hemisphere cloudy day is about 300 Wm^2, giving a power output of about 100 W. That is sufficient to power a conventional model aircraft of that size at moderate speeds, so it seems plausible to me. Solar-powered conventional R/c aircraft already exist, but those don't have the mass and efficiency penalty of (current) ornithopter drive or a requirement for flexible wings. So again, I think it'll take a decade or so to be really practical; for solar cells of sufficient efficiency to get cheap and flexible enough.
Real birds of that size conserve energy using thermals and updrafts, which would give you more margin for payload power and operations early / late in the day.
The best solar cells around, period, are about 40% efficient. The best thin-film cells are around 20% efficient. That being said, smarter control software coupled with simply flying faster may be able to make up the gap. Birds don't flap that often really, they glide and do neat tricks with the wind and gravity to get where they want to go.
Vendetta wrote:Richard Gatling was a pioneer in US national healthcare. On discovering that most soldiers during the American Civil War were dying of disease rather than gunshots, he turned his mind to, rather than providing better sanitary conditions and medical care for troops, creating a machine to make sure they got shot faster.
Hawkwings wrote:Birds don't flap that often really, they glide and do neat tricks with the wind and gravity to get where they want to go.
Most raptors and some seabirds do that. However migrating songbirds and waterfowl do flap continuously for days on end, travelling thousands of kilometres.
Er... I think you are both missing the point that these things are built around an helium balloon, and so have the density of air at sea level : other than for the internal electronic, the only energy they need is for propulsion/direction - their natural state is up in the air.
Rabid wrote:Er... I think you are both missing the point that these things are built around an helium balloon, and so have the density of air at sea level : other than for the internal electronic, the only energy they need is for propulsion/direction - their natural state is up in the air.
That is true for their earlier aquatic-styled UAVs. The SmartBird however does not use any aerostatic lift and is hence significantly more impressive. There is some detail on the construction in this video. R/C ornithopters like this have been on the market for about a decade now - I've been tempted to get one several times - and gasoline powered prototypes have existed since the 1950s. Most of them just brute force the problem though, with horrible efficiency; the Festo design has more sophisticated articulation, aerodynamics and control logic.
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