"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
First off, Nikola Tesla was insanely brilliant. The Croatian-born engineer spoke eight languages, almost single-handedly developed technology that harnessed the power of electricity for household use, and invented things like electrical generators, FM radio, remote control, robots, spark plugs, fluorescent lights, and giant machines that shoot enormous, brain-frying lightning bolts all over the place. He had an unyielding, steel-trap photographic memory and an insane ability to visualize even the most complex pieces of machinery – the guy did advanced calculus and physics equations in his head, memorized entire books at a time, and successfully pulled off scientific experiments that modern-day technology STILL can't replicate. For instance, in 2007 a group of lesser geniuses at MIT got all pumped up out of their minds because they wirelessly transmitted energy a distance seven feet through the air. Nikola Tesla once lit 200 lightbulbs from a power source 26 miles away, and he did it in 1899 with a machine he built from spare parts in the middle of the desert! To this day, nobody can really figure out how the hell he pulled that off, because two-thirds of the schematics only existed in the darkest recesses of Tesla's all-powerful brain.
