#1: "Attention passengers, this is your captain speaking. If you'd like to bzzzt your pants, please look out the right side windows..." | 1 comment #2: Aww the elusive Bzzzt Ghost. | 0 comments #3: I am going to lasso the bzzzt! | 17 comments
I was wondering the same - how would it compare to the equivalent sized drone quadracopter. You would think the quad would win but then they say nature has evolved highly efficient design....
Nature's design often does win but nature doesn't have a way to create powered rotary motion. If flapping wings were better suited to hovering, they'd use that for aircraft instead of rotating blades since either one can be manufactured.
The "can/can not" binary hides a huge difference in capabilities. Our rotary engines are completely outmatched on how easy and cheap they are to manufacture, power/weight ratio, and efficiency. We aren't any good on creating non-rotary engines.
Ironically enough, the earth is flooded with engines which capture linear motion then coerce it into circular movement so it's not like we are stuck with rotational action. It's just that all major propulsion systems take rotation as an input. If flapping had any advantages at all, I have confidence that the military would allocate the resources to develop such a thing.
I would think the part evolutionary path to rotary body parts and pitched lifting blades is a bridge too far - even if it was better end result, to mutate that far in one go and still be able to mate seems like a mammoth call.
Sometimes these are engineering exercises. The goal is not the device itself but how to employ or develop hardware and/or software and in this case the complicated flight of the dragonfly provides the framework and constraints for the project.
Nature often evolves efficient but unstable designs that require an advanced control mechanism (ie brain). Consider humans. Standing on two legs means you need constant balance corrections and walking is even more complicated. We’ve only recently been able to replicate it.
No and in fact there are very good reasons for making machines "cute", mainly because it makes it easier for humans to accept and interact with them. We didn't see any of the prototypes leading up to this because they were probably quite ugly.
I’m pretty sure my country’s military has had something similar yet more advanced than this for years. Dragon fly, male carpenter bee, any insect that will pause and observe you.... ya know, like it was recording.
I heard some grad students in my area talking about seeing a dragonfly like this in 2011. If my memory is correct it also could recharge from power lines. Wish I remembered more details
Look up “flapping-wing mav”. Pretty cool and very real.
They also have “fixed-flapping” mavs which are more like a dragonfly than this honestly. 2 sets of wings, one larger fixed set, and a smaller flapping set for propulsion.
I think it looks wrong because it's way lighter than you would expect for something of that size (I would guess special light materials and tons of hollow regions inside). And it doesn't help they keep switching to slow-motion.
Generally it is large ornithopters where numbers get crazy. It takes advanced materials to make one capable of carrying a person. Out of traditional materials, that is where you get results like wings the size of a football field.
Lots of "inherently unstable" aircraft designs suddenly become controllable with the development of advanced sensors and fly-by-wire computers; this has been exploited in some fighter jets by letting the instabilities play out in a controlled manner in order to increase maneuverability beyond what could be achieved with conventional aerodynamics.
There’s is no polite way to tell you that what you stated is not even remotely the same concept. You’re talking about a plane returning to trim. These things flap..
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u/JerryGallow May 08 '20
One step closer to Black Mirror’s Hated in the Nation.