It Flies: Da Vinci's Dream Comes True
Festo is well known in the industry for making very elegant and graceful demos like that:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F_citFkSNtk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nhfFnEQM1aU
Funny how Festo's SmartBird has been posted to HN multiple times over the past few months, but never voted up: http://www.google.com/search?q=site:news.ycombinator.com+sma...
Proof that having a good HN headline matters!
Hello DoD? Yes, we've built the most revolutionary battlefield surveillance tool since the airplane. You want 4500 of them? Sweet.
Talk about hiding in plain sight.
I am always fascinated with flying like superman (who hasn't been), and this gives me confidence that one day humans can fly with a similar bird-like mechanical device, not a jetpack or massive engine on our backs.
I always thought if we copy nature, we will be very successul in engineering a device to allow humans to fly gracefully and safely.
The making of the bird:
When you can add the the total wing tuck, it will greatly increase the mobility.
The breakthrough here was to design wings that torque and twist differently in many different places giving this machine more of the lift, propulsion and flight options a real bird would have.
You know who else designed wings that twisted? The Wright Brothers. Think about how different air travel would be if they weren't so greedy with their patent.
It's Orwellian that the name given to a mechanical bird that is inferior in nearly every way to the real thing is "Smart." Its sole redeeming quality is the ability to be put to use by the military.
The author of the article claims that these machines are "celebrations of life," but to me they seem much more like celebrations of human control.
I, for one, welcome our new avioid overlords.
Seriously though, the elegance is just breathtaking, i'd love to get myself one of those.