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Science

Mechanical Butterflies? 356

Posted by CowboyNeal from the travelin-arrakis-style dept.
MImeKillEr writes "According to an article on BBC News, two researchers from Oxford took highspeed photographs of an Admiral butterfly in a specially-designed windtunnel to study how butterflies fly. The resulting research brings insight into small-scale flight dynamics. Although the article doesn't give an ETA on this, they expect to be able to build an aircraft with a 10cm wingspan that will be either autonomous or radio controlled. This will allow them to be used in rescue missions, cave exploration and possibly even on Mars."
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Mechanical Butterflies? More

Mechanical Butterflies?

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  • Don't forget... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by doubleyewdee ( 633486 ) <wd@telGAUSSekinesis.org minus math_god> on Friday December 13, 2002 @06:25AM (#4879393) Homepage
    If you could put cameras on these things they would be great for espionage. I imagine the military would love to see some tiny radio controlled flying vehicles with video capture capability.
    • Ever read Stanislav Lem's "Peace on Earth" [cyberiad.info]?

    • If you could put cameras on these things they would be great for espionage. I imagine the military would love to see some tiny radio controlled flying vehicles with video capture capability.

      Oh, right, the military! This is exactly what I thought when I read about "tiny radio controlled flying vehicles with video capture capability." I surely can't see any better uses [voyeurweb.com] for them. (Who said I do?!)

      • Maybe the military can write standard operating procedures on the control and use of such flying support vehicles with their WordStar. Perhaps they can fund the maintenance of them with krispy kreme bake-sales.
    • I would try it on beaches first...:-D
    • Actually, Tom Swift (I'm pretty sure it was Tom Swift) did it, about 2 decades ago. Except it was a tiny robotic dragonfly. Nominally good Sci-Fi, creating a new technology and then exploring the implications of it. Can't remember the title of the book but I'm sure some other geekly folks here also read the story.

      • In Danny Dunn, Invisible Boy, the professor builds a life-sized dragon fly that is flown by remote control. It had eyes and ears, and he thought of using it for exploring. Danny Dunn ends up destroying it, and the professor's notes, when the government develops an interest in using it for spying on people.

        Did anybody else on Slashdot read the Danny Dunn books when they were children? His mother is the housekeeper for Professor Bullfinch, and they have all sorts of adventures that are, for the most part, scientifically possible, at least sort of. Danny Dunn and the Homework Machine featured a computer called MINIAC.

        I tend to think of the Danny Dunn books as being the geek's version of the Hardy Boys or Nancy Drew, except that they're good.

  • My taxes (Score:2, Funny)

    by Fuzzypig ( 631915 )
    I feel proud to know my taxes are once again being spent on something useful... I notice they used smoke to spot the airflow, I hope the butterflies were consulted first on breathing 2nd hand smoke or we could be in for some costly litigation in a few years time!

  • Could you imagine... (Score:5, Funny)

    by myLobster ( 528056 ) on Friday December 13, 2002 @06:26AM (#4879399) Homepage

    ...if the MSN marketroids ever got their hands on this technology...arrgh the butterflies...they're everywhere...
  • ... two researchers took highspeed photographs of a pig in a specially-designed windtunnel to study how pigs fly. This will allow them to be used in rescue missions, cave exploration and possibly even on Mars.
  • funniest thing I saw
    but really hard to fly : planes with flapping wings
    this technology is today where fixed wing tech war one century ago (ie a few hundred meters flight at 2 or 3 meters altitude)
    www.ornithopter.net/

    • Re:mechanical birds = ornithopters (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Richard Kirk ( 535523 ) on Friday December 13, 2002 @07:37AM (#4879669)
      Scale is important. Turbulence happens more readily at large scales. Viscous drag is more significant at smaller scales. Gravity is more significant at larger scales. A very small insect is effectively rowing through the air, using most if its effort to propel itself along. An aircraft spends most of its effort creating lift - and drag, because the two always go together - to keep itself up. So, we're not going to have 747's with butterfly-shaped wings flitting from building to building. Which is a shame....
  • Sure they might be really small, but won't they have huge problems with supplying enough fuel/electricity to keep them in the air for long periods of time?

    I mean sure cool you can fly a littly x10 butterfly up to look in your neighbours windows but if it can only stay there for a minute, whats the point?

    --

    nich

    • The cool thing about digital photography is that all you really have to do is a flyby. You can stop, zoom, and process the captured video images afterwards.

      Also, all this thing has to do is broadcast a live video transmission. Recording it can be done remotely, so you don't have to worry about either recovering the device, or taking up weight with memory or recording media. Simply fly in as far as the power source will allow then either recover the device later or hope the images you have are worth the cost of losing it.
      • Simply fly in as far as the power source will allow then either recover the device later or hope the images you have are worth the cost of losing it.

        I think the neighbor girl might notice.
      • Have you watched a butterfly flitter? I think I'd puke if I had to watch that looking for significant frames.
      • Ooh! It'd be neat to combine it with that slug-eating robot techology that was discussed here some months ago. An army of slug-eating robotic butterflys would be hella-cool!

    • Re:What about fuel (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Maddog Batty ( 112434 ) on Friday December 13, 2002 @09:09AM (#4880073) Homepage
      We can produce land vehicles than can travel across continents without refuelling. No animal can do this.

      We can produce aeroplanes that will fly around the world without refuelling. No bird can do this.

      I see no fundamental reason why we can't produce a mechanical butterfly that can operate for days without refuelling as real butterflies can achieve this. If you are really small then the energy required to keep you aloft is really small also. I've absolutely no idea how much energy a butterfly requires to keep it in the air for a day but my guess would be that it is considerably less than that contained in one drop of petrol.

  • the World we Live in (Score:5, Insightful)

    by buswolley ( 591500 ) on Friday December 13, 2002 @06:29AM (#4879413) Journal
    "This will allow them to be used in rescue missions, cave exploration and possibly even on Mars."

    and possibly, terrorism. and possibly Big Brother's lil Helpers, and possibly a pest to native birds who try to eat them.

    What a world we live in!

  • So let me get this straight... (Score:5, Funny)

    by D-Cypell ( 446534 ) on Friday December 13, 2002 @06:29AM (#4879415)
    We are planning to send a fleet of mechanical butterflies to mars...

    Good morning slashdot!
  • I can own my own Thropter ... Arrakis here i come !

  • I heard this on NPR (Score:5, Insightful)

    by imrdkl ( 302224 ) on Friday December 13, 2002 @06:32AM (#4879427) Homepage Journal
    And enjoyed the final note:
    Invasion by swarms of butterflies not likely in the future.

  • In other news... (Score:5, Funny)

    by D-Cypell ( 446534 ) on Friday December 13, 2002 @06:32AM (#4879428)
    Although the west assures the world that butterfly aircraft will be used for exploritory purposes, iraq believes that the butterflies will be used for offensive purposes...

    They have responded by ordering several large nets.
  • There is no way that anyone is going to build an autonomous device that uses the same techniques as a butterfly for a long time.

    The butterfly has had hundreds of millions of years to develop it's flight model. It's just not as simple as 'wings shaped like this, that flap like this'. It's about the finely tuned control mechanisim (in this case, butterfly brain) that controls the speed, angle, force, curvature etc, of the wings that counts.

    This reminds me of people who keep insisting Moores Law will deliver us a smart computer soon. I could wait forever, but hyper threading technology is never going to say something smart.

    It also reminds me of a joke; What's the last thing that goes through a bugs mind as it hits a windshield? It's ass.

    • Re:Not for a long time. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by n3k5 ( 606163 ) on Friday December 13, 2002 @06:53AM (#4879507) Journal
      > The butterfly has had hundreds of
      > millions of years to develop it's
      > flight model.

      So what? The lotus flower had at least as much time to develop its self-cleaning petals, but it took human scientists just a few years to develop an agent that gives any glass surface the same property just by spraying it on. It forms the same nano structures that make water drops, which take every trace of dust and dirt with them, flow off completely, or even drops of super glue.

      > It's about the finely tuned control
      > mechanisim (in this case, butterfly brain)

      Oh look, behold the mighty powers of the butterfly brain, which is about as intelligent as my cheapo Casio watch. I don't see much problems with emulating this. By the way, most of the 'knowledge' about flying isn't in that tiny butterfly brain anyway, it's hardwired into the nervous system. The wings flap so fast that the delay of sending impulses all the way to the brain and back all the time would be too big.
      • most of the 'knowledge' about flying isn't in that tiny butterfly brain anyway, it's hardwired into the nervous system. The wings flap so fast that the delay of sending impulses all the way to the brain and back all the time would be too big.
        I agree. But taken as a whole, the butterflys nervous system contains a behavorial complexity that simply can not be delivered by MIPS, or any other deconstructionest viewpoint.

        Ok, to clarifly; I think this problem, or almost any other AI problem, _can_ be solved by this aproach, just not in a efficient way (like NP hard kind of efficient ) Intelligent behaviour arises directly out of the relationships of parts, not out of any real ability of the parts.

        You say your watch is about as smart as a butterfly. Let's see it fly to Mexico and get laid.

        In the end, I think you might just be able to get a Casio watch to pilot a butterfly, but it's going to take a lot more insight than some high speed photographs.

        • Re:Not for a long time. (Score:2, Insightful)

          by n3k5 ( 606163 )
          But taken as a whole, the butterflys nervous system contains a behavorial complexity that simply can not be delivered by MIPS, or any other deconstructionest viewpoint.

          If you're thinking about writing algorithms (if-then-else-style) that emulate a butterfly's behaviour down to every wing-movement and fitting them into a tiny microchip: yes, that would be _very_ hard.

          Of course you can't actually achieve anything with wrist-watch technology; however, there are alternatives: Self-learning algorithms, neural networks, genetic algorithms, etc. There was that /. story about a robot that taught itself how to fly, remember? As I said above: you don't have to re-invent nature, you can copy and emulate nature instead. Much less effort.

      • What's so good about evolution? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by LondonLawyer ( 609870 ) on Friday December 13, 2002 @07:55AM (#4879740) Journal
        When things develop through evolution it tends to be by a series of small changes, each representing no improvement or a small improvement. This means that although evolution over a long time tends towards a working solution, it doesn't always tend to the best (most efficient) solution. The structure of your eye is a case in point - the blood supply lies in front of the light sensitive cells of the retina.

        What may be useful is that the process can find non-intuitive solutions to problems and there is a built in robustness to what emerges. Random variation has to have a wider tightrope to walk or any deviation from the norm would be fatal. Complex evolved systems also tend to have a built in redundancy as they grow out of similar and simpler systems which become interrelated.

        Slashdotters may remember a report a year or so old about an evolving robot which developed dragonfly-like flight. Why take a pattern found in nature (photographic the butterfly) and try to work out how it works when you can evolve it directly with a learning system? If you're going to ape evolved systems it seems much more sensible (and easier) to me to ape the process rather than the result.

        • Re:What's so good about evolution? (Score:1, Interesting)

          by Anonymous Coward
          The structure of your eye is a case in point - the blood supply lies in front of the light sensitive cells of the retina.


          ...and the octopus eye's blood supply lies behind the retina, and therefore has no blind spot, as we do. More importantly, this radical difference between the human and the octopus eye suggests that they evolved completely independently -- which I find quite amazing considering the complexity of the organ.
        • You're right, and the evolution-aping does have many merits.

          What's so good about evolution is, as you allude to, the robust testing mechanism. The hardest part about genetic algorithms and other forms of self-learning is defining the criterion to judge any given solution by. Evolution has that covered -- if the organism can survive and reproduce in the face of limited resources, other organisms that may think of the organism as food, adverse weather, and everything else the world can throw at a poor carbon-based mess of chemicals.

          That's part of why studying the existing solution can be beneficial. Could the genetic-algorithm-based dragonfly fly in the rain? A stiff breeze? The answer could easily be no, and the only way to get it to learn that is to expose it to those elements. This naturally slows down the learning process (you can't only progressively expose it to new tests, because it could easily 'forget' how to fly when it's not raining otherwise). Okay, that may be a bad example, as I don't think offhand that dragonflies can fly in the rain... But I think you see the point.

          I love genetic algorithms (mostly because it saves -me- from having to solve the problem myself ;) but studying the results of other algorithms with a proven history can't be a bad thing. :)

      • Re:Not for a long time. (Score:1, Insightful)

        by lipi ( 142489 )
        > The butterfly has had hundreds of
        > millions of years to develop it's
        > flight model.

        So what? The lotus flower had at least as much time to develop its self-cleaning petals, but it took human scientists just a few years to develop an agent that gives any glass surface the same property just by spraying it on.

        True, but the lotus flower is capable a lot more than just repelling water/dirt: it can repair the damaged surface, it can reproduce itself literally out of nothing - just water, sunlight and some minerals. Moreover it can come up with new designs if the environment changes. The list could go on.

        Try to top that with a bunch of scientists and a few years of development...
      • Can someone point me to some info about this self cleaning glass stuff?
      • So what? The lotus flower had at least as much time to develop its self-cleaning petals, but it took human scientists just a few years to develop an agent that gives any glass surface the same property just by spraying it on.

        You're saying human scientists were able to do that a few years after we speciated from whatever our direct ancestor was? Wow, I missed that.

        No, really, I understand -- you're saying it won't necessarily take forever, now we've thought of it, to mimic butterfly flight. Maybe.

        But go take a look and see how long submarine designers have been trying to mimic the agility (and specifically, lack of drag) of dolphins in the water. Or watch the way a sparrow uses stall speed when it lands on a tree branch outside your office window. Ain't necessarily all that easy. We can't make robots that run around like a five-year-old can, and that's a mode of locomotion we know pretty well, right?

        I have liatris aspera plants in my front priarie garden -- a monarch magnet -- and sometimes in August there are maybe eight butterflies dogfighting for position out there. They aren't sluggish in flight, not at all. Maybe you haven't watched a buttefly lately?

      • " Oh look, behold the mighty powers of the butterfly brain, which is about as intelligent as my cheapo Casio watch. I don't see much problems with emulating this. By the way, most of the 'knowledge' about flying isn't in that tiny butterfly brain anyway, it's hardwired into the nervous system. The wings flap so fast that the delay of sending impulses all the way to the brain and back all the time would be too big."

        A lot of really smart people have been working on this for a while now, and even the 'simplest' insects have us beat by a long shot.

        Simply put, our robotics sucks. It takes immense processing power to have a robot that can pick up a cup of water, so long as the cup is *always* in the exact same place, the arm in the exact same start position.

        Now try making your casio watch navigate all the way to Mexico using scent and light to guide it.

        Anyways, insects have decentralized nervous systems compared to ours, so I think it's safe to say that it's brain "knows" about flying. You can consider the whole nervous system it's 'brain'.

  • God how much I'm delighted to hear about this.

    I take a look at the science fiction books that I read years back and I look at now. Soon my favorite science fiction books will become not just speculation, but reality. Things like mechanical butterflies aren't something to be scoffed at like I assume some will, but something to be hailed.

    I yearn for the days that these little mettalic insects can be seen fluttering in flocks towards fires or car accidents, offering those minded to it a warning of danger or peril.

    I feel good right now, the technologically advanced world I want for my children could be at hand sooner than I thought.

  • mars mission? (Score:5, Informative)

    by n3k5 ( 606163 ) on Friday December 13, 2002 @06:38AM (#4879458) Journal
    In the atmosphere of Mars, the are only 1.5% the molecules we have. The composition is also evry different, but the point is: it's _very_ thin. OTOH, the gravity on Mars is about 38% of Earth's gravity.

    So if you have something that flies on Earth, it's still a long way to go until you get it to fly on Mars.
    • IANAAE (I am not an aeronautical engineer), but I assume that something like this can be easily solved by scaling up the wings, without the body. After all, many insects fly to several km high, and is how almost all of the insects got to Hawaii, where I am from.

      • Re:mars mission? (Score:4, Insightful)

        by kramer ( 19951 ) on Friday December 13, 2002 @07:53AM (#4879732) Homepage
        Well, first bear in mind that the Martian atmosphere is MUCH less dense than even the air at several km elevation. Standard pressure on earth at sea level is defined as one atmosphere. Standard martian ground level pressure is about 0.01 atm. Even at 20 km elevation (far higher than any insect could fly) earth's atmospheric pressure is still 0.05 atm, or still 5 times that of Mars.

        The weight of the wings will increase with the cube of the size of the wings, meanwhile the lifting power of the wings will increase with the square of the size of the wings. It is quite concievable that by the time you get the wings large enough to lift the body in a Martian atomsphere the wings will weigh too much to lift themselves and the body as well.

        Plus, just scaling the wings won't work. Any serious increase in the size of the wings will require you to increase the size of the motor, solenoid, dielectric fiber, or whatever is moving the wing.

        This is not to say it can't be done. I really have no clue if it's feasable on a Mars. It's just that just scaling the wings won't work.

        • Re:mars mission? (Score:4, Funny)

          by ruzel ( 216220 ) on Friday December 13, 2002 @09:22AM (#4880172) Homepage
          I would just like to thank kramer for pointing out the low liklihood that this development would work on Mars -- revealing the ridiculous tendency that tech writers have to send *everything*, possibly, to Mars. When I release my plans for a super effcient juicer or an internet-enabled Easy-bake oven I definitely intend to put in the press release that these things would be useful on Mars.

          Yeesh.
          ______________

        • Re:mars mission? (Score:3, Informative)

          by Xerithane ( 13482 )
          Plus, just scaling the wings won't work. Any serious increase in the size of the wings will require you to increase the size of the motor, solenoid, dielectric fiber, or whatever is moving the wing.

          In an unnamed project, we had the task of building a simulator (99.9% accurate, my what fun) for flight on mars. After building the system, when the plane reached 180 knots it would begin an oscillation pattern that would eventually drive it into the ground.

          We got some aerospace engineers to take a look at the problem, and they started laughing and said that was normal because we were breaking the speed of sound at that altitude/speed.

          Flying on mars is much different than flying on earth for a lot of things you wouldn't directly think about. But you are right, scaling wings wouldn't do anything right there. The best way to make a plane to fly on Mars is to look into glider dynamics.
  • Did anyone else, while reading "Admiral butterfly," imagine Steve Ballmer in MSN butterfly suit dancing on the stage? My God, this is not a nice thing to imagine while reading about technology, which can be a voyeurism breakthrough...
    • Next, he be sweaty and breathless while flying over stage. Would that be better?

      • Did anyone else, while reading "Admiral butterfly," imagine Steve Ballmer in MSN butterfly suit dancing on the stage? My God, this is not a nice thing to imagine while reading about technology, which can be a voyeurism breakthrough...

        Next, he be sweaty and breathless while flying over stage. Would that be better?

        No, it certainly would not. Especially when he would start to scream: "Developers!!! Developers!!! Developers!!! Developers!!! Developers!!! Developers!!! Developers!!! Developers!!! Developers!!! Developers!!! Bow before me as I am Admiral Butterfly!!!"

  • Tiny machines that fly like insects will soon be a reality. That is the confident prediction of scientists who have just studied the remarkable aerobatics of the butterfly. There is a lot of interest in this sort of thing from toy manufacturers Dr Adrian LR Thomas The two Oxford researchers put red admirals in a specially designed wind tunnel and used high-speed cameras to analyse how the animals moved through the air. The results of the experiments, they say, represent a major advance in our understanding of flight mechanics on the small scale, and will be invaluable to engineers trying to build "micro air vehicles". "There is a lot of interest in this sort of thing from toy manufacturers and, of course, the military," Dr Adrian LR Thomas told BBC News Online. "We are now moving in the direction where we will soon be able to build 10-centimetre-wingspan aircraft, either radio controlled or autonomous. "They would make an entertaining toy but if you put a camera on them then the [security agencies] could send them into small spaces such as caves to see what was going on." Effortless switch Red admiral, Adrian LR Thomas Wisps of smoke were blown over the wings Dr Thomas has spent 12 years studying insect aerodynamics. The wind tunnel used in the butterfly experiments took three years to construct and fine tune. With help of Dr Robert Srygley, red admirals (Vanessa atalanta) were trained to fly freely to and from artificial flowers in the tunnel. Wisps of smoke were blown over the insects' wings to see how they interacted with the air. The visible turbulence was caught on an ultra-fast digital camera. "The fluttering of butterflies is not a random, erratic wandering, but results from the mastery of a wide array of aerodynamic mechanisms," Srygley and Thomas report in the journal Nature. They identified six different ways the butterflies flapped and rotated their wings to stay airborne. The insects moved effortlessly through the different mechanisms "much like a horse might switch between walking, trotting and galloping depending on what it wanted to do," Dr Thomas said. BBCi Nature Click here for facts about red admirals Much to learn The researchers found the insects could, at times, fly very efficiently, producing very little turbulence. On other occasions, the red admirals' wings deliberately created vortices to achieve extra lift. "We saw conventional aircraft-style aerodynamics, two different kinds of leading-edge vortices, rotational mechanisms, wake-capture mechanisms and the so-called clap and fling." It is known that insect wings produce 10 times the amount of lift achieved by aircraft wings (per unit of area). Building tiny planes that were just scaled-down versions of the real thing would never get off the ground. It is only by mimicking the insect world that micro air vehicles will get airborne efficiently. And while miniaturisation experiments are progressing fast, engineers confess they still have much to learn from the animal world.
  • Combine the Tornado in a can [slashdot.org] with this and you'll have the Quantum Butterfly.
  • The atmosphere of Mars is less dense than Earth's atmosphere. Isn't this a problem?
  • "We saw conventional aircraft-style aerodynamics, two different kinds of leading-edge vortices, rotational mechanisms, wake-capture mechanisms and the so-called clap and fling."

    So is anyone else here in the States concerned that there might be a growing gap in clap and fling technology?

  • Remembering the chaos theory description of the wide reaching potential of tiny effects:

    Do we now have robotic weather control ? :-)
  • Will meteorology profit from mechanical butterflies?

  • Swarms + GPS (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Proc6 ( 518858 ) on Friday December 13, 2002 @07:35AM (#4879658)
    Would be interesting to see if they could create the butterflies with a small video camera as well as a GPS to indentify exactly what theyre looking at, and from what direction.

    Send a massive swarm out that all broadcast back small pieces of the scene from different angles. All of the physical location data is combined with the video, a computer back at "base" assembles it all into a 3D VR world.

    Then you as a participant ("butterfly tamer" ?)could control the swarm, and as you moved through VR space, the butterflies would move through physical space to try to build up the detail of image necessary for what you're looking at.

    • Sounds cool! Presumably the longer a swarm stays in one place, the better your resolution is likely to get....

      Links to AI flocking behaviour resources which might be of interest....

      Oxford Uni:
      http://www.maths.ox.ac.uk/~sumpter/

      Craig Reynolds (early boid work):
      http://www.red3d.com/cwr/boids/

      Manchester Uni:
      http://www.eng.man.ac.uk/Aero/wjc/Research/F lockin g/FlockingIndex.htm

      US Airforce:
      http://www.vs.afrl.af.mil/News/99-23.ht ml
  • The atmosphere on Mars is extremely thin --- Any mechanical butterfly you could put there would likely fall out of the sky and flail around on the ground within seconds. It aint Earth, kids.

  • This definitely reminds me of the ornithopter.. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by haggar ( 72771 ) on Friday December 13, 2002 @07:57AM (#4879745) Homepage Journal
    from Dune.
    Again, reality imitates (science) fiction. Nice!

  • smallest rc airplane (Score:3, Informative)

    by ch-chuck ( 9622 ) on Friday December 13, 2002 @08:58AM (#4880008) Homepage
    that I know of is this guy [slowfly.com], the L'il Skeeter.
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • The big reason that the flight system of a butterfly works so well (hummingbird too) is that the wings have a relatively large surface area, and the overall mass of the system, the butterfly, is low compared to the lift force it can generate.

    The problem is, a butterfly uses quite a bit of energy (relative to its size) to keep itself aloft. Unless we have a reliable way to generate a proportional amount of energy while keeping the power source light enough, we won't be able to simulate the flight of a butterfly.

    Honestly, I think we should stick to planes for a while. We've got enough trouble keeping them in the air and running on time; best not muck it up by throwing butterflies in the mix.
  • How are we going to deploy these things on Mars? Surely, it would take about 500 years for one to fly there (assuming it could store enough fuel of some type). Until we can land a probe, I'll assume this to be the method of transit. ;)

  • Ripe for acquisition (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    They'll just get swallowed up by some larger company.
    Probably one that makes mechanized predatory birds.

  • Okay, so my question is how one could possibly power a mechanical butterfly. Living butterflies subsist on nectar; it's high energy, but they still need a massive daily intake. So, it seems like powering a butterfly would require a super-light-weight battery with long life and high output. Photovoltaic wings might work, but then it couldn't fly at night. Any thoughts on other sources of power? Superconducting monofilament extension cords?

    And incidentally, the article says that insect wings get 10 times as much lift as airfoils. Presumably, that's for airfoils moving at the speed of insects. Has anyone found a way to test this with a butterfly moving the speed of a jet plane? I'm curious if the proportion holds true at all speeds, or if the ratio collapses as speed increases.

    • Easy, there was an article [com.com] not too long ago talking about using nuclear energy as a possible powersource for laptop batteries. Granted, you're not going to see a 10cm butterfly dragging a Dell laptop battery, but technology is allowing things to get smaller and smaller. I can't imagine that they wouldn't be able to power this puppy via a small nuclear cell or some other efficient method.

  • In caves? Hardly. (Score:3, Informative)

    by mtngrown ( 24296 ) on Friday December 13, 2002 @09:30AM (#4880233)
    RC in caves is a ludicrous concept, save for line of sight, but then, why bother. Cave radios work with really looooowwwwww frequencies and require rather large coil antennas to transmit through all that rock. Cave radios are pretty finicky too. This is why cave rescue organizations (good ones) have the ability to lay a mile or two of phone wire in really horrible conditions.

    RC butterflies or RC anything-else just ain't gonna happen in a cave.

  • Espionage? Not with butterflies... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by iiioxx ( 610652 ) <iiioxx@gmail.com> on Friday December 13, 2002 @09:34AM (#4880257)
    A few people have suggested the military applications for these robotic butterflies, particularly in the area of espionage. The problem is this: butterflies make terrible spies, because everyone notices them!

    How many times have you heard someone say, "look at the pretty horsefly on the windowsill"? Eh, never right? But we notice butterflies, because they are beautiful and elegant. In fact, of all of the insects around, I'd say butterflies are the ones most likely to be noticed, picked up, and examined because they are colorful and generally harmless. Well, that's probably the last thing you want, someone picking up your robot spy. "Hey, this butterfly has a resistor soldered to it's back..."

    So the idea of making a robotic butterfly spy is probably not workable. Maybe a robotic cockroach spy..? Never mind, they'd just get stomped on sight. That might just be the real problem, trying to find an insect that wouldn't provoke interest, either positive or negative.
  • This research should be of interest to those developing the RoboFly [mirror.co.uk], currently under development, with a grant from the US military, for reconnaissance missions. It weighs a tenth of a gram, is only slightly larger than a fly, has a tiny camera, and solar-panels that power two tiny motors, which in turn power razor-thin polyester wings that allow it to fly in relatively still air. A working model is expected to be completed by the end of next year.

  • Meteorological Warfare (Score:3, Funny)

    by GothChip ( 123005 ) on Friday December 13, 2002 @10:30AM (#4880677) Homepage
    It's just a plan for Meterological Weapons (Weapons of Meterorological Destruction).

    If you get a large group of gigantic[1] butterflies flapping their wings on one side of the planet, can you imagine the havoc it would create on the other side of the planet. Hurricanes, Whirlwinds and Typhoons at the drop of a hat (or flap of a wing).

    [1] Gigantic on the butterfly scale of things.
  • Yes - 50s Sci Fi becomes reality! sort of.

    Danny Dunn had a dragonfly made out of super light and tough plastic propelled by jets of air, and eyes that were hooked up to a helmet you put over your head. The helmet gave you a 280+/- degree view of your surroundings, and allowed you to hear what was going on in the vicinity. It was completely immersive and seamless to the user. (VR!)

    Pretty cool for 50s-early 60's tech. :)

  • ...used in rescue missions, cave exploration and possibly even on Mars.


    Or, much more likely, espionnage and assassination. Idealists.

  • "This will allow them to be used in rescue missions, cave exploration and possibly even on Mars."

    Or by microsoft for advertising purposes!
  • This will allow them to be used in rescue missions

    How many butterflies does it take to pry open the door of an automobile and lift the occupant to safety? How many to put out a house fire? Or rescue a downing person swept away in a flood? Or locate an Altzheimer's patient who has wandered away from home?
    That's what I thought.

    It's interesting research, but lets not blow this out of proportion or set unrealistic expectations by exaggerating the usefulness of the (proposed) technology.
  • I haven't been there in several years, but one of the things I always loved was that in the video you watch whilst waiting in the lobby, there was a fantastic shot of a person touching a butterfly that - upon close examination - was actually a robot (i.e. by the cyberdyne corp. in the video).

    Of course, I'm also having a vision of Neal Stephenson's Diamond Age, not so much because he mentioned robot butterflies (he didn't, in fact) but just the general concept he had of nano-tech gardens.
  • Nobody suspects the butterfly!!!! MUHAHAHAHAHAHA
  • This is NOT a new idea. The Entomopter was developed, and discussed over a year ago.

    Here's a link to it: http://www.cosmiverse.com/space12030102.html [slashdot.org]

    It also explains how the thin atmosphere of Mars actually works to help their design of a flapping winged robot.

  • My Paranoid Response (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Skip666Kent ( 4128 ) on Friday December 13, 2002 @12:14PM (#4881588)
    Very soon there will be nowhere to hide, as flying/airborne networks of 'bugs' with full audio-visual capability will be all over, indoors and out, in due time. There's no way to stop this and I'm not saying we should try, but it will make life 'interesting' in ways we can barely conceive of right now.

    Mosquito nets, repellant and bugspray will take on new meanings in the not-too-distant future.

    • You can take some new technology and give it an Orwellian spin.

      Gosh, can you imagine what would happen if tens of thousands of people had small portable, self contained powered, remote, broadcastable color TV cameras...

      oh wait they do [x10.com]

      -Malakai
  • So let me get this straight...NASA is considering sendng Iron Butterfly to Mars? Quite frankly, I think until we get the issue of the boy bands booked on one way trips resolved, we shouldn't worry about sending these guys.

    Although In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida would make for much cooler space music than Thus Spake Zarathustra.
  • DARPA MAV [google.com]

    Fun stuff to look into - I seem to remember not too long ago a /. article on a MAV constructed in which they posted a white paper (in PDF format, IIRC) on the device - it was pretty small, several centimeter wingspan, used a pager motor for propulsion and custom micro-servos for control, and had an onboard wireless video camera. I remember that supposedly it could stay aloft for up to 30 minutes of flight time, and was made from dense styrofoam. The white paper was detailed enough that someone (aka - r/c flight hobbiest) could easily build such a thing from the description and pictures given.

    I suggest that if you are interested in building such a thing, look into using parts from micro-RC race cars. Some people are already experimenting - I read about one guy in Japan who tried to build a micro plane from his micro-car parts by attaching them to a small balsa glider (it didn't work very well - but it was a start)...

  • ... by Cyberdyne Systems. Didn't you see their promotional video? "Imagine a world... where butterflies run on batteries."
  • I first heard about this on NPR, where they were discussing its millitary applications, as in, sending small, insectoid robotic spies into the caves where terrorists are suspected to be hiding, etc.
    What fascinated me was what they'd discovered about the flight patterns of butterflies. Apparently the idea of a "chaos butterfly" has another meaning. A butterfly's flight is literally random. Their wings are controlled by around 5 sets of muscles, each causing a different kind of movement, which causes their erratic flight. The thing is, the researchers can't find a pattern to it. The military was looking at butterflies because of this erratic flight pattern. It makes them nearly impossible to catch. Very good for spy-bugs.
    But in all truth, the science is really awesome, but the proposed military applications are disturbing. If they have robotic bug-spies.. they could literally have eyes anywhere, and who says they'd restrict it to enemy territory? This is the war on terrorism, a war which Bush is assuming is on the home front, and I think he's already shown how far he will go to root out suspected terrorists.
  • ...if you have something like the BattleSuits in Heinleins's "Starship Troopers"? That's where we gotta go. If you can stomp on 'em, you won't have to spy on 'em. URAH! :})||
  • BzzzzzzzSLAP!

    Damn! Tell them to send another one...

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