Studies In Ornithopters 223
weileong writes "This should be of especial interest to fans of Frank Herbert's Dune (or maybe only those who preferred House Atreides) - a genuine, flexible, flapping-capable winged aircraft (by which I don't mean passenger-carrying. Yet.) has been produced by the University of Toronto's Institute for Aerospace Studies and SRI International (Washington Post article, free reg required). Advantages include everything from low speed control to efficiency. Once these things really hit "real world" usage, the V-22 Osprey really HAS no reason to exist (and all the army personnel at risk of dying in one should rejoice)."
Material Fatigue ? (Score:4, Insightful)
WTF's up with all the talk of carrying PASSENGERS? (Score:5, Insightful)
The article was crystal clear on this.
Quote: "Mentor came into being in response to a vision of a "fly-on-the-wall spy"
Quote: "stealth "micro-air vehicles"
Quote: "Flapping wings offer several advantages over the fixed wings of today's reconnaissance drones"
Quote: "long toyed with many scenarios, including one in which soldiers would deploy a swarm of camera-equipped robotic insects to probe inaccessible terrain."
Quote: "... ah, the hell with it! Go ahead and talk about your flying cars as long as you like.
Re:WTF's up with all the talk of carrying PASSENGE (Score:2)
Re:WTF's up with all the talk of carrying PASSENGE (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Material Fatigue ? (Score:4, Funny)
You want that martini shaken or shaken?
Re:Material Fatigue ? (Score:5, Informative)
Assumption is the mother of all f**k-ups... (Score:5, Insightful)
You're assuming that a military ornithopter transport would be safer than the Osprey. A bit of a leap of faith seeing as it hasn't even got past the university project stage.
Re:Assumption is the mother of all f**k-ups... (Score:2, Insightful)
In a fundamental sense (at least the way I see it) the flap-wing aircraft would just be doing things "within parameters" though, yes, it's at a "university project" stage now.
Re:Assumption is the mother of all f**k-ups... (Score:2)
A design like this isn't going to be ready for military use for 50 years, if ever.
Re:Assumption is the mother of all f**k-ups... (Score:2, Informative)
There was (is?) a scandal about how a lot of the personnel who were involved in the Osprey project have systematically been fudging reports to make things look better than they really are. This makes evaluating its performance hard because you can no longer trust any "good" reports.
When you say accidents, what are we talking about exactly? The kind of thing where nobody walks away from, or? (i.e. are we comparin
Re:Assumption is the mother of all f**k-ups... (Score:5, Informative)
Err, no. Harriers have an excellent safety record and an even better combat one. During the Falklands War, British pilots of the Royal Air Force and Royal Navy lost none of their Harriers to enemy aircraft (one was shot down by ground-based anti-aircraft fire) whilst managing to shoot down twenty Argentine aircraft - this despite the fact that the subsonic Harriers were matched up against supersonic opponents.
VIFFing (vectoring in forward flight), a strategy limited to the Harrier and other VTOL aircraft capable of redirecting their thrust mid-flight, is a favourite dog fight strategy of Harrier pilots. One minute you're on his tail, lining him up for a shot, then next minute the Harrier's no longer in front of you because its pilot has "jumped" vertically. And, by the time you've worked it all out, he's dropped back down behind you and is about to missile lock your aircraft.
Next time, do your research.
Re:Assumption is the mother of all f**k-ups... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Assumption is the mother of all f**k-ups... (Score:4, Informative)
OK, how bout next time you do your research, too. A quick google search turned up this story [latimes.com] from the LA Times (mirror here [missouri.edu])
Quote from the story:
And before you go off about untrained or unskilled American pilots again, check the author's Q&A here [latimes.com], where he points out this: and this:The Harrier is not a safe aircraft. The RAF knows it, that is why they are part of the Joint Strike Fighter program. That program aims to create a VTOL aircraft without the problems of the Harrier.
Re:Assumption is the mother of all f**k-ups... (Score:3, Insightful)
"Military officials knew about defects in the flaps and ejection system for years before fixing them, while planes crashed and pilots died."
Well, that's a maintennace issue, isn't it? If you know something needs fixing and you deliberately ignore it bad things will happen. That's true whether it's a Harrier, a car tyre or unpatched web server.
Proficiency in the Harrier cockpit requires, at minimum, 15 to 20 hours in the air each month, a
Re:Assumption is the mother of all f**k-ups... (Score:3, Insightful)
All good points, and all understood. But, that doesn't mention whether the other planes with much better safety records get the same treatment pilot/maintenance wise. I understand that the Harrier is difficult to fly and maintain, but don't those make up some of its primary faults?
Should anything in an aircraft be harder or more dangerous to do than landing an F/A-18 Hornet on a moving aircraft carrier? The Harrier has more than 3 times the accident rate of those Hornets.
Saying that we shouldn't ex
Re:Assumption is the mother of all f**k-ups... (Score:3, Insightful)
In Britain, where maintenance-related mistakes are relatively rare, some Harrier mechanics have worked on the plane for more years than their American counterparts have been alive.
Some Marine leaders acknowledge that the Harrier, quite simply, is often too complex for the recent high school graduates who typically maintain it.
"We had regular guys fixing them, not engineers," said retired Lt. Gen. Charles H. Pitman, a former chief of Marine aviation," and so we found that some of th
Re:Assumption is the mother of all f**k-ups... (Score:2)
One likely reason the British Harriers had a higher accident rate is that they fly more low-altitude missions, leaving less margin of error. Another explanation may be that the current British Harriers use older, less reliable engines.
At the same time, maintenance mistakes account for far fewer accidents in England. Rolls Royce, the British firm that makes the Harrier?s Pegasus engine, overhauls the Royal Air Force engines. The Marines handle this task themselves with the
Re:Assumption is the mother of all f**k-ups... (Score:4, Informative)
Harriers - the Widowmaker [latimes.com] (from the LA Times)
Some excerpts:
Far From Battlefield, Marines Lose One-Third of Harrier Fleet [latimes.com]
The corps, pursuing its long-held dream of a unique flying force, pays a heavy price: 45 of its elite officers killed.
Many of the Harrier's ailments can be traced directly to its innovative vertical-thrust technology. But despite the investment of tax dollars, aircraft and pilots' lives, there is little evidence that the Harrier's noncombat deaths have been redeemed in any significant way on the battlefield
In the Persian Gulf War in 1991, the hot thrust-producing nozzles in the heart of the fuselage -- the devices that allow the Harrier to rise and balance in the air -- made the plane a magnet for heat-seeking missiles. Its loss rate was more than double that of the war's other leading U.S. combat jets. Five Harriers were shot down and two pilots died.
"It's the most vulnerable plane that's in service now," said Franklin C. "Chuck" Spinney, who evaluates tactical aircraft for the Pentagon.
Next time, do your research
I actually did, you'd be pleased to know.
Re:Assumption is the mother of all f**k-ups... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Assumption is the mother of all f**k-ups... (Score:4, Insightful)
Dude, there were hundreds of CH-46's in the Fleet. There were, what, 8 Ospreys?
I also don't see why an ornithopter would fill the role they envisioned for the Osprey. The Osprey was meant to be a VTOL or STOL aircraft with over-the-horizon capability. How would a 'thopter solve that problem?
No pictures?? (Score:5, Insightful)
Googling...
Could this [reallycooltoys.com] be it?
Re:No pictures?? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:No pictures?? (Score:2, Insightful)
Other than that, it's pretty cool.
~S
Re:No pictures?? (Score:3, Funny)
the alfoil umbrella thing # a single seat plane (Score:2)
I thought the article referred to the "Mentor" alfoil thing, not the small flapping one-man aeroplane. But I guess that makes me a slashdot rebel because I read the article?
Here's another ornithopter (Score:3, Interesting)
And this one you can buy for less than $15.
Start with that, see how it works, then design your own, and you could start doing your own model designs, and work up from there.
Ornithopters predate Dune (Score:5, Interesting)
Remember Edgar Rice Burrough's Mars books?
Re:Ornithopters predate Dune (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Ornithopters predate Dune (Score:2)
Some of them are available at Project Gutenberg [promo.net]
#1 - A Princess of Mars [ibiblio.org]
#2 - Gods Of Mars [ibiblio.org]
#2 - Warlord of Mars [ibiblio.org]
I think there were about 12 books, but only a few are available at PG. ERB's work was some of the first titles there. Pretty cool (and very imaginative) old-school Sci-Fi. You may have heard of his other work -- Tarzan.
Yes, but.... (Score:2)
Where in the books were there any ornithopters?
The standard Martian airship was a dirigible--lifted into the air by the mysterious "8th ray" and driven by propellers. If the engine went out, it would float in the air to be blown around by the wind.
Wrong branch (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Wrong branch (Score:2, Informative)
MV-22 is slated for Marine usage, the CV-22 is for the USAF, and the USN is looking at an HV-22 variant for Combat Search and Rescue (CSAR).
The USAF version, the CV-22, will be operated by the USAF under US Special Operations Command.
Re:Wrong branch (Score:2)
The V22? (Score:5, Informative)
The V22 is _finally_ getting to the mature design stage. They removed the problems that killed people (mostly, no a/c is perfect) like the inability to handle the loss of ground effect under one rotor.
Now they have an a/c which can not only take off vertically (or very sharply with high load), fly at 400mph and carry a ton of stuff. For it's role it beats the shit out of any helicopter (fast enough to do the job more fuel efficient, heavier loads,) and and cargo plane (no need for a JATO unit, can't run a C5 off a carrier).
This new technology is (like the tilt rotor concept was) unproven, and requires a complex set of engineering decisions to be made to get it to fly safley (like the tilt rotor). In 20 years, with a few deaths, it might be great - but the tilt rotor is here now.
FWIW there is now a commercial version of the V22 in prototype, the BA commuter aircraft. Small enough to land on helipads, but fast enough for intercity (and in Europe) international work. There have also been plans for a gunship version of the V22, with a massive rotary cannon and the ability to fly very slow it's even going to make the A-10 look a bit lightweight
Re:The V22? (Score:5, Funny)
I think it's far to say that any conditioner that could ever hurt people, nevermind kill them, is very far from perfect indeed.
A/C just isn't worth dying for, I don't care how hot the summer was.
Re:The V22? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The V22? (Score:3, Funny)
I think it's far to say that any conditioner that could ever hurt people, nevermind kill them, is very far from perfect indeed.
He wasn't talking about aircon, you fool.
AC stands for Anonymous Coward. They're a dangerous bunch, you know...
Re:The V22? (Score:2)
After spending 5 years chasing a BSAE in college, believe it or not, when i was done, 'aircraft' was the first thing i thought of when seeing 'a/c'. that said, i did think it was weird the first time i saw it.
Absurd (Score:5, Informative)
Your argument is all and well, except that aircraft ARE virtually perfect- it's the ones that are NOT perfect that we hear about. Second, when an aircraft is NOT perfect, you're supposed to fix it. The contractor involved and the armed forces instead outright lied through their teeth and ignored the problems while soldiers continued to die. Lastly, the problems were far more extensive than just one issue with ground effect.
There have also been plans for a gunship version of the V22, with a massive rotary cannon and the ability to fly very slow it's even going to make the A-10 look a bit lightweight
One of the warthog's best features is its heavy armour- some jokingly call it the 'flying bathtub' because of the cockpit reenforcement. I believe most hydraulic and electrical systems are also heavily armoured. It takes more than just a plane to make an effective way to shoot at people. Nevermind that the V22 looks to be completely intolerant of failure in either engine- and as any pilot knows, twin engined planes have twice as many engine failures because, surprise, you've got two of 'em :-) I'd be curious to hear your thoughts on how someone would eject from the V22 without standing a good chance of being sliced to pieces.
As for the original poster's comment that this will replace the V22- I hardly see how. Ever notice that 'Ornithopters' in nature don't really exist above a dozen pounds or so? Sure, we had some big flying dinosaurs a while back, but even those weren't nearly big enough to weigh as much as a small plane.
Re:Absurd (Score:5, Insightful)
And the ornithopter, being a different design, clearly will not have this fault.
Re:Absurd (Score:5, Informative)
That said, the V-22 will not be a A-10 replacement. That simply makes no sense. A gunship version has been proposed but it's more along the lines of an AC-130 gunship. Orbit higher and a little futher away from the targets. More of an area weapon for softer targets not getting down and dirty with heavy armor. The 'Hog is tops for that.
Early test V-22s did have ejection seats. The rotors do not pass above the cockpit so there is a small path in VTOL mode and obviously a larger path in airplane mode for a safe ejection. Current production ships no longer carry this feature and like any other cargo ship, there were never plans to eject all the passengers.
Re:Absurd (Score:2)
Cite where Bell in any way lied or otherwise acted improperly in regards the V22. Every document I've seen was clear that Bell was on the up & up and was in no way responsible or supportive of the deceitful military program managers.
Re:Absurd (Score:2)
How about the 177 "flight critical" safety failures, or the 723 "critical component" failures? http://www.insidedefense.com/public/special16.asp
That woulod be the "ignored the problems" part. How on earth could to ethically allow someone to use a plane which has such a staggering number of defects? Let's not even get into the gross incompetence aspect.
Bell could have spoken up at ANY time to say "this bird ain't ready t
Re:Absurd (Score:2)
And you can't tell whether the number of failures sited is excessive without the ability to compare then to previous similar aircraft / helicopters during the same stage of their development.
Some of the examples mentioned in the article are fuel, oil, hydraulic leaks and a door that sometimes could be opened. While these can cause a
Re:Absurd (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Absurd (Score:3, Insightful)
The seeds from Maple trees are natural propellers that perform "auto-gyro" landings.
The Wheel:
Rocks will often get pulverized into fairly round chunks forming spheres (2-d) wheels. Dung beetles will create ball shaped collections of crap and roll them back to their dens.
Combustion Engines:
Inside the cells of most biological organisms is a chemical combustion engine capable of transforming hydrocarbons (with oxygen) into energy. The stroking piston action is very natural and can be observed in
Re:The V22? (Score:5, Informative)
The VRS has now been shown to not be a symptom of tiltrotors only, its boundaries have been mapped out, warning sensors have been installed, and VRS exit strategies developed. In a helo, you just gain some forward speed or sideward speed. In a tiltrotor you have the additional option of tilting the nacelles a few degrees. In addition, plenty of improvements have been made to all sorts of subsystems and the computers have been through the cleaners to check for more bugs.
The commuter ship, the BA609, will also benefit from these studies. It's target certification date is late 2007. That date is so distance for a variety of reasons, most of them non-technical.
Tiltrotors are complicated, but I've flown the BA609 sim, and it's by far the easiest VTOL aircraft I've flown and the capabilities are impressive.
Re:The V22? (Score:5, Informative)
First point correct, second point misses the mark. The C-5 (and the C-17 and C-141) are entirely different classes of aircraft than the V-22. The V-22 is designed more to set troops into action like a conventional helicopter such as the Black Hawk does, though I believe it's possible to parachute from them. The other three are primarily cargo aircraft with secondary airborne capacity. Their ranges also beat out the Osprey's.
There have also been plans for a gunship version of the V22, with a massive rotary cannon and the ability to fly very slow it's even going to make the A-10 look a bit lightweight
That's also going to require putting a lot of armor onto an Osprey, and I don't know if it can handle that. Your performance statistics seem to be off of the real mark, judging by the Navy's version of things [navy.mil]. With a max speed of only 275mph, and what looks to be a fairly small difference between the empty and various max-takeoff weights, I don't see this becoming a challenge to the A-10 anytime soon, since that plane not only carries the GAU-8/A (with its weight of 281kg plus a kilo for every round), but also up to 7250kg of payload underneath it. I've seen pictures of them with a bevy of Mavericks slung underneath, and it's a menacing sight.
Getting back to the original story topic, though, I can't see yet how this idea would translate into a usable large aircraft as the submitter is hoping. The forces are significantly higher at the wingtip than at the root which is going to stress the wings in an increasing fashion the longer they are, not to mention the material fatigue from a material that is constantly changing directions. I can see this used as they envision now, with small drones or perhaps as a new ultralight, but I can't see how the increased lift would be generated efficiently for a replacement to even a small troop transport like the Osprey.
Re:The V22? (Score:2)
Re:The V22? (Score:5, Insightful)
Come on, give the submitter a break. They did say when orithopters hit the "real world", V22s wouldn't be needed.
Yeah, 500 years in the future when micro-fusion produces the massive amounts of energy needed to drive an ornithopter capable of hauling 22 fully loaded marines, when we spin nano-tech fibers strong enough to withstand the vibrations yet light enough to beat without huge inertia... yes, by then there'll be no need for a 490 year old v22 fleet.
Re:The V22? (Score:2)
The V-22 and tilt wing aircraft in general promise a heavy "rapid-deployment" capability over much longer halls. I would expect to see tilt wing turbine craft operating in the future.
Need more modpoints (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Need more modpoints (Score:2)
Re:Need more modpoints (Score:2)
Yes, there is an RCS, (like a spaccraft) with exhaust gas vented fore and aft as well as at the wing tips. This actually goes all the way bac
Talk about Recycling... (Score:3, Funny)
Here [slashdot.org] is the original slashdot story.
Here [ornithopter.net] is a link to the ornithopter website.
related article with picture (Score:5, Informative)
Mentor Micro-Air Vehicle [popsci.com]
Wow, it looks weird.
But on Mars? (Score:5, Interesting)
If submiter had bothered to read the article (Score:5, Insightful)
Various small ornithopers have been built. You can even buy toy windup versions. In small sizes they work.
They do not scale. There is no known way to make them scale. Neither the physics nor the engineering support the idea of producing large amounts of lift be rapidly anad violently flapping around large inertial masses.
Not to mention the fact that in the large scale the problem has been solved already with the rotating wing.
I haven't a clue how thousands of pounds of rapidly flapping metal could be deemed to be potentially safer than the Osprey, particulary given the sorts of mechanisms that would be required to drive them.
KFG
Re:If submiter had bothered to read the article (Score:3, Interesting)
the body of any aircraft using this method will move up and down in synch with the wings. Hardly something you want in a long distance passenger aircraft!
It would probably redefine the whole airsickness experience!
A Scaled Up Ornithopter DOES exist... (Score:2)
Re:Here's the URL (Score:4, Informative)
A certain idiot who shall remain nameless left this out of his post...
Ornithopter.Net [ornithopter.net]
I think these are the same UofT guys who built the smaller model mentioned in the article.
Re:If submiter had bothered to read the article (Score:2)
The submitter also said army personnel at risk (i.e. soldiers), but the Army has no plans to buy the Osprey.
Ornithopters... (Score:5, Funny)
As a blocker, it can't be beat.
Re:Ornithopters... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Ornithopters... (Score:2)
V-22 (Score:5, Informative)
The poster's theory that the ornithopter will somehow make this superfluous is a bit ludicrous. An ornithopter large enough to carry troops will likely be even more complex. Taking the output from a turbine engine and gearing it down to spin a prop is trivial--we've been doing it for decades. Even with the complicated transmissions and crosslinks and control systems on the V-22, it's still basically just a combinatinon and evolution of previous aircraft.
Taking output from a turbine and translating it to drive a piston is another matter. It can be done, of course, but entails much higher losses. The researcher says enormous amounts of energy are required for the small one, and it's, um, small.
The strength of the parts is another issue. Making wings and linkages that will drive them is going to be a challenge. As will performance after an engine failure.
Don't get me wrong, this is quite an achievement. For the unmanned aerial vehicle trade. I don't think we'll have the technology to make a troop transport, or even a one-man aircraft, out of an ornithopter for a long time.
Trying to foist this as a replacement for the Osprey is a bit ludicrous. Replacing a complicated aircraft with a more complicated one does not lend itself to safety or reliability, right out of the box.
with pictures - I got pictures (Score:3, Informative)
This thing seems to go back to at least July.
The picture looks like something we could build with alfoil from the kitchen, a broken umbrella and a toy aeroplane engine. Maybe we need video too. Anyone got Video?
And just because you can't think of a good use (non military) doesn't mean there isn't one. Mark Twain had trouble imagining what use a telephone would get, and Bill Gates didn't believe in the internet for a long time.
now with video, if you are patient (Score:3, Informative)
Re:with pictures - I got pictures (Score:2)
A good point. Let's all brainstorm then.
Imagine -- just for the sake of argument -- that it were possible to build a device that could lift off from the ground and fly from one point to another, much like a bird or an insect.
Imagine also that such a device could be built large enough t
evolution (Score:5, Funny)
Centuries of evolution?
Wow! They've found a young-earth darwinist! : )
Compare apples with apples ... (Score:3, Informative)
Ridiculous comparison, this technology is designed to build micro-drones while the Osprey is supposed to lift tons of armament and passengers !
Maybe they don't want to make it... (Score:4, Interesting)
Dare I say Avro Arrow [avroarrow.org]?
The Avro Arrow was a plane produced by Canada that was years ahead of its time. Unfortunately, because of the immense pressure from the U.S. (they didn't want Canada to sell the technology to other countries), the project got shut down.
Yes, there's a little more to it than that, but that's the basic jist.
Read more about the Avro Arrow and the politics behind it at wikipedia [wikipedia.org].
Re:Maybe they don't want to make it... (Score:2, Interesting)
That part that says that the US wanted to buy Arrows just to convince Canada to keep the program alive?
That part that says that the cancellation of the Arrow might not have harmed Canada's aerospace industry, as it is now the 3rd largest makers of aeroplanes (after the US and France)?
The part that says that spending money on the program was eating up a large and unsustainable portion of the government's spending?
Another note to add, not in that article (but available
Did you even read your link? (Score:3, Insightful)
The Avro Arrow was a plane produced by Canada that was years ahead of its time. Unfortunately, because of the immense pressure from the U.S. (they didn't want Canada to sell the technology to other countries), the project got shut down.
From the article you linked to:
As costs rose, other divisions of the armed forces saw their own budgets cut, and even groups inside the RCAF in charge of European operations were worried that there would be no money left over for a new tactical fighter needed there. In
Frankenstien's method (Score:3, Interesting)
Isn't someone already doing something like this with cockroaches? It seems to me that we should just use the heads of people and animals to pilot all of our transportation. Who wouldn't like Dale Earnhardt's head driving you to the store and to pick up the kids?
Oh. Nevermind.
V-22 Complexity (Score:3, Interesting)
I think the V-22 has had problems just because it is too complex.
You've got two jet-turbines, which can each power both rotors. So you've got a very complex power distribution system. Lots of stuff in those pods which rotate, so lots of flexible connections which can break.
I would have preferred to see a design with six or so smaller ducted fans. So even if you lose one on each side (due to small arms fire, for example) you still have enough power to maneuver and land safely. Two or three lost on one side would need ballistically deployed parachutes to land.
Hmph. I've just described a Moller skycar [moller.com]. The production version hasn't flown yet. But with relatively modest funding, I bet it could. Still got a complex computer control system, so who knows what bugs might lurk there.
Re:V-22 Complexity (Score:2)
I was talking about multiple ducts because I think cross-linking is a bad idea. I think that the cost in terms of weight and complexity outweights the redundancy advantages. So yes, the idea was the system would have enough excess lift capacity to handle the loss of a single duct.
A military version of the skycar wouldn't have some of the same constraints as the civilian one. Moller is worried about noise and ground damage during take-off. Marines don't care about that. You could increase the size o
CarterCopter a more likely V-22 replacement (Score:3, Informative)
I don't believe it will go quite as fast as the V-22, but mechanically it's a much simpler design, more of a morph between a gyrocopter and fixed wing. In the 2-engine variety it will do a true hover, and they expect it to scale up into the C-130 size range or so. And manned experimental versions have been flying for a year or two now, even at Oshkosh.
Re:CarterCopter a more likely V-22 replacement (Score:2)
cause all sorts of dynamics issues plus it'll need to have a way of controlling blade pitch just like a helicopter (otherwise when locked you'll get torque issues) which means
it'll be just as complex as a chopper internally.
If gyrocopters were the solution I'm damn sure boeing would have used them as the V22 project could hardly be called cheap.
Flight is one area NOT to copy nature in. (Score:5, Insightful)
flight using fixed wings wings far more efficient than flapping for the sort of aircraft capable of carrying people or cargo. People should bear in mind
that just because nature comes up with a particular solution does NOT mean its the best one. Wings only exist in nature because continuous rotary motion using vertibrate
muscle - bone structure is simply impossible therefor the next best thing evolved - backwards and forwards motion of wings. Evolution comes up with the "good enough" solution , not the best.
Re:Flight is one area NOT to copy nature in. (Score:2)
Re:Flight is one area NOT to copy nature in. (Score:3, Interesting)
Your proof is?
Wings may not be perfect, but they do a great job of some tasks - such as hovering - that fixed wing aircraft are lousy at.
If you read the article, it suggests small unmaned spy craft - where hovering is essential.
Re:Flight is one area NOT to copy nature in. (Score:2)
Flapping requires moving the mass of the wings up and down. None of the kenetic energy that isn't passed to the air is retained on the
opposing stroke and its all lost as heat in the muscles. Compare that to a rotary engine that just keeps turning.
"that fixed wing aircraft are lousy at."
And so you use a rotory craft. Theres also the minor issue of how the hell the thing would take off from the ground if its flapping wings could
only flap to a small angle until its airborn. Ie when it
Washington Post excludes 106-year olds! (Score:3, Funny)
It was perfectly happy to let me read the article as a 101-year old though...
More Ornithopter info... (Score:4, Informative)
Do you want to be shaken, not stirred? (Score:3, Interesting)
But whether ornithopers will ever carry humans in any quantity is doubtful because the ride will, to say the least, be sickeningly bumpy. The unsteady flows over the flapping wings mean cyclic forces on the fuselage and cyclic accelerations for the passengers. The ride will be much much worse than that of a helicopter and more like the ride in a small boat riding a very rough swell. Other flapping organism don't mind the vibration and cyclic motion of flight as they are evolved to tolerate it. In contrast the human propioception system will definitely hurl when subjected to the "graceful" up and down motion of a large-scale flapping machine.
Ornithopters will make really cool recon drones, whether over battlefields or Mars, but they will make horrible passenger vehicles
Re:Do you want to be shaken, not stirred? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Do you want to be shaken, not stirred? (Score:2)
That's the least of the problem. Consider this:
Perhaps evolution is giving you a small hint here?
Pretty fun stuff to watch (Score:2, Insightful)
Flight control using insect vision (Score:2, Informative)
To make the Dune reference complete (Score:4, Funny)
When Idiots Comment on Military Hardware (Score:5, Insightful)
For starters, the US Army does not have any personnel at risk from the V-22 Osprey, because the US Army is forbidden by Congressional Mandate from operating fixed-wing aircraft. The US Marine Corps is spearheading the operational deployment of the Osprey. Also, the US Navy and Air Force are evaluating prototypes.
The next idiocy is the implication (likely based in outright aviation ignorance) that the V-22 is at all an unsafe aircraft, or even more outlandish - that an untested and infinitely more complex aircraft design is going to be safer. The V-22 Osprey has an outstanding record for a fixed-wing VSTOL aircraft, and considering it is a new type of VSTOL (of which none have every peen deployed, and only a small series of research prototypes have been based on), it is without saying that thus far the aircraft has peformed very well.
That one insipid litany of ignorance ruined what would have otherwise been a decent article - except that really, Slashdot has been going down the tubes when it comes to "quality" articles for a while now. If you get that many submissions in a day, you'd think you could weed out the pedestrian ones like this, or at least trim the fat off the meat.
Re:When Idiots Comment on Military Hardware (Score:2, Funny)
Re:When Idiots Comment on Military Hardware (Score:2)
BUNK looking for a research grant ! (Score:5, Insightful)
"nature can provide ready-made solutions." is a comment made in many fields including computer science. The problem is that nature developed solutions for a carbon based lifeform. Imitations in silicon, steel, polymers cannot hope to achieve the same results. Flocks of birds do fly but they also eat and their cells reproduce and die. Steel and silicon simply dissipate energy (with nothing close to a Krebs cycle [demon.co.uk] for renewal) and wear out (since repair or replacement of steel or silicon is hideously demanding of energy). So on a very fundamental level, solutions found in nature do not completely translate to the current materials of technology. You can get aspects of them, like the imitation of flapping flight, but not the whole package.
But lest you think, "Fine. We'll go with _some_ of the benefits." Think: what are they? The article says Flapping wings allow insects and birds to fly at low speeds, hover, make sharp turns and even fly backward. The latter cite trying to imitate a hummingbird's flight. A hummingbird's flight can already be imitated by helicopters and even the V-22 Osprey. But both the helicopter and the Osprey achieve the desired result (within bounds dictated by inertia and thrust-to-weight ratios) with a structure evolved for maximum efficiency given the materials i.e. the propeller. Even if you are utterly fanatic and feel that flapping is the way to go, consider further the imitation of a hummingbird. The birds virtually eat constantly [144.90.137.57]. In fact, you could argue that the researchers haven't looked to nature very closely for their solutions. Even if you could translate the physical properties of a hummingbird to a machine, nature itself demonstrates that the energy requirements are huge for that type of flight. At least the researchers acknowledge this at the end of the article but the impression is more that it is an afterthought rather than an evident truth even before the research had started.
And is the flapping flight really the goal of ornithopters in this article? In this article it's a flock of small, lightweight robots hovering over Martian land rovers and guiding them to places of interest that seems to be the pitch. So what advantage do ornithopters have over other "eye in the sky" objects like helicopters, blimps, gliders, or high power satellite cameras? There don't seem to be any.
At this point one might even ask, how appropriate is a solution inspired by nature (on Earth) to the environment on Mars? Environments on Earth that are similar to Mars don't have an abundance of life because there isn't much to support the energy requirements of life. Therefore a solution based on "nature" is arguably inappropriate.
And finally, Mars exploration has top priority at the CSA. Sorry but Canada officially bowed out of its option to participate in the Mars exploration program via lack of federal funding [css.ca]. Maybe some Canadian companies will keep their hand in without the CSA but odds are NASA will buy American, and why not?
(As for the submitter's comments, let's put on our thinking caps people. What kind of ride would people in the hull of a flapping aircraft get? Replacement for the Osprey indeed!)
Not exactly new... (Score:3, Interesting)
"Passenger carrying"? Did you read the article? (Score:5, Interesting)
These are small military machines. Their purpose is to enhance our ability to kill people that piss us off.
The martian exploration stuff is flim flam, because, as they themselves say, this is about the most inefficient way we could possible devise of flying about. Efficient flying animals hardly flap their wings at all. In contrast Hummingbirds drink eighty seven times their own weight in a cocktail of cocaine and Red Bull each day just to stay alive. And if you're not sure of my grasp of mathematics or biology there, consider that the alternative is believing someone who says "centuries of evolution have produced structures and systems that work very well".
Ornithopters are essentially cool-but-useless at the human scale. Yes, everyone said the Wright brothers were crazy too, but the thing is, the Wright brothers looked at ways of improving on the results of (literally hundreds of years of!) random evolution. Merely mimicking it just seems to produce a lot of problems, and fixing them appears to give a solution that's worse than what we already have.
Good luck to the people that get to play with these, but really, we should just stick to the much more credible miniature black helicopters [zapatopi.net].
Here's another one (Score:2)
Real cutting edge aviation tech - CarterCopter (Score:2)
The preliminary jet-powered design looks pretty promising too. [cartercopters.com]
Re:Army!?!? (Score:2)
oooh, what instrument do you play?
troc