Stuttgart-based Festo claims to be inspired by nature, having deciphered bird flight with its Smart Bird. The ‘bird’ is highly aerodynamically efficient, even turning its head like real gulls do to refine aerobatic turns, and can take off and land by itself.
Inspired by the herring gull, the Smart Bird can start, fly and land autonomously – with no additional drive mechanism. Its wings not only beat up and down, but also twist at specific angles, much like a real gull’s wing will do–positioning the wing tips at the best angle for generating lift and spilling less waste air. This is made possible by an active articulated torsional drive unit, which in combination with a complex control system attains an unprecedented level of efficiency in flight operation. It is built with ultra-light materials like carbon-fibre and has sensitive control electronics to give it a total mass of around 0.4 kilograms (33% less than an iPad 2).
The ‘bird’ can communicate its flight data back to the remote operator in real time, to adjust fine parameters like wing torsion in real time to achieve optimum flight.
Festo AG & Co. KG is a leading world-wide supplier of automation technology and the performance leader in industrial training and education programmes. The company is known for innovations by its Bionic Learning Network department – last year it won the €250,000 “Deutscher Zukunftspreis 2010” for a Bionic Handling Assistant inspired by elephant’s trunk.
Source: Festo AG & Co. KG
gr8 … i just love this bird !