On Wings Anew

"Though Minos blocks escape by sea and land.

The unconfined skies remain

  though Minos may be lord of all  the world

his sceptre is not regnant of the air, and by that untried way is our escape."

                                                                                                                     Ovid's Metamorphoses

Such were the words of Daedalus, the father of Icarus, spoken as the two of them sat, trapped in a tower by the evil king Minos of Crete. Daedalus saved them by creating a set of wings for both himself and his son using the feathers of birds. According to the Greek mythology, he was actually quite successful, except for the tragic mistake of binding the feathers together with wax, which melted when his son flew too close to the sun.  Symbolic. Refering to Indian mythology and the epic saga of Ramayana, we see the villain, Ravana, abducting the Sita in a chariot with wings. Dramatic.

From biblical angles to the mutant in X-Men, man has always wanted wings. Earliest experiments to mimic birds failed rather comically and Leonardo Da Vinci’s designs remained on paper. But there was a breakthrough and two brothers finally got it (W)right. Thenceforth came the era of the giant birds of steel. The airplanes today have a fixed wing system but the future seems to be more flexible.

A curious cat purring lightly at a bird, lunch, slowly it moves toward the winged creature with the stealth of a trained predator. As it gets closer, the features of the bird get sharper. But wait, the cat is confused, still it attacks and instantaneously the bird takes flight. In flight the steel joints glisten, the cleverly concealed eye for a camera captures everything. The terrain has been mapped, the unheard conversations recorded and it’s another successful mission for our ornithopter.

There is a stereotyped view that hovering bird is a prototype of a plane.  The prototype of a plane is a kite. The difference is obvious: kite is staying in the air due to overcoming of the air drag, while the bird relatively to the air – with its wings fixed – is always going down.  As hinted above, an ornithopter (from Greek ornithos "bird" and pteron "wing") is an aircraft that flies by flapping its wings. Designers seek to imitate the flapping-wing flight of birds, bats, and insects. The mechanics inside is divided into flexible wing mechanics and flapping wing mechanics and goes on to add various principles like low Renyolds’ number flight dynamics. Not going too technical here,

One may say - why all the hustle, where is the advantage?

·         
Vtol i.e. vertical landing and take- off: I don’t need to explain this to the gamers out there but for the “lesser” kind here it is.  Imagine no runway!  VTOL allows the craft to operate from a diverse array of airfields, using less space to get airborne unlike CTOl where one has to use a runway to gain enough momentum to take off.

·         Lighter, far less complicated: It works on simple wing design. Unlike airplanes and helicopters, the driving airfoils of the ornithopter have a flapping or oscillating motion, instead of rotary. As with helicopters, the wings usually have a combined function of providing both lift and thrust. Theoretically, the flapping wing can be set to zero angle of attack on the upstroke, so it passes easily through the air. Since typically the flapping airfoils produce both lift and thrust, drag-inducing structures are minimized.

·         Capable of long time loitering and hence great for surveys and stealth missions.

·         Finally the element of surprise, camouflage and to say a more natural feel in a sense.

·         Understanding the real birds a bit better

·         Maneuverability which the steel giants defiantly lack.

These are few of the many advantages that an ornithopter has over the conventional aircrafts we see today.

What are people in practice doing?

The Colorado Division of Wildlife has used these machines to help save the endangered Gunnison Sage Grouse. An artificial hawk under the control of an operator causes the grouse to remain on the ground so they can be captured for study.

In 2011, AeroVironment, Inc. announced a remotely piloted ornithopter resembling a large hummingbird for possible spy missions.

In 2008, Schiphol Airport started using a real looking mechanical hawk designed by falconer Robert Musters. The radio controlled robot bird is used to scare away birds that could damage the engines of airplanes.

In March 2011, scientists and engineers at the Festo Bionic Learning Network introduced a robotic SmartBird, based on the motion of a seagull. The SmartBird weighs only 450 grams and is controlled by a radio handset. On video, its flight appears remarkably realistic.

Today’s aircraft have nowhere near the agility and precision of nature’s best fliers. “Bats are different from most animals—and from most engineered materials—because they have very flexible wings that offer a lot of interesting aerodynamic properties,” says Kenny Breuer, a mechanical engineer at Brown University. Patrick T. Mather and his team at Syracuse University have created a material with a similar quality: The polymer chains line up to make it stiff and stable in one direction, but 12 times as elastic in the other. Five to 10 years from now, such a material could allow the wings of small unmanned aircraft to flap by expanding and contracting, which would enable planes to fly at slow speeds and pivot precisely during surveillance missions.

So that was the past, the present and now how are these toys going to invent the

future?

In the Dune universe created by Frank Herbert, an ornithopter (or 'thopter) is a type of aircraft that is one of the primary modes of transportation on the desert planet Arrakis. Herbert describes ornithopters as "Aircraft capable of sustained wing-beat flight in the manner of birds" in his 1965 novel Dune.  The craft achieve takeoff primarily though the beat of their wings, with jet power assisting in propulsion and stabilization. His ‘thopters and carryalls were used for transportation, spice harvest, with maul guns could be used in combat and also for space travel.

That was Frank Herbert’s world we have our own:

·         Integration with swarm robotics: Imagine, Thousands of crows pick up litter everyday across cities everywhere across the world, but are they crows?

·         The flapping mechanism of the bird is similar to that of fishes while they swim. In the future we may have biomechanical submarines disguised as sharks, whales or whatever tickles the designers’ imagination. These can be used for mapping underwater terrain, under water tourism, military and what not.

·         With advancement of technology one may even even try to recreate extinct birds and dinosaurs in order to study their flight behaviour.  Going a bit into fantasy, throw in a flame thrower and viola your very own dragons!

There are endless applications of this fascinating concept. Our imaginations may be restricted now, but one can let go and end up creating something worthwhile.

 Lastly, making a rather bold comment, airplanes are too mainstream. The future belongs to amphibots, ornithropters and to the ones who give wings to their dreams.

 “A bird is an instrument working according to mathematical law, and it is within the capacity of man to reproduce it.”

                                                                                                                      Leonardo Da Vinci