to fly like a bird,
and many bold inventors tried it, and other ways to fly, but here eventually is a man made bird, that really does fly,
German
automation company Festo recently unveiled its latest bio-inspired creation,
the Bionic Swift, a lightweight robot capable of mimicking the flight of an
actual swift, photographs by Festo, earlier
this month, the robotics studio showcased their newest invention, a lightweight
flying robot inspired by the swift and capable of mimicking its flight
maneuvers with impressive accuracy. From steep turns and drops to
nausea-inducing loops, the new Bionic Swift can pull of most, if not all, of a
real swift’s movements,
in order to imitate real swifts, Festo’s robotic versions had to be ultra-light, weighing in at a meager 42 grams each, or about as heavy as a golf ball. The birds are about 17.5 inches long, with a 27-inch wingspan, but don’t look much like birds from up-close, as the company’s designers focused more on bio-mimicry than exterior design,
despite its small weight, each Bio Swift houses a brushless motor, two servo motors, a battery, a gear unit, and various circuit boards for radio, control, and localization. Thanks to a radio-based indoor GPS, each robot has spatial awareness and can fly in a coordinated pattern. Each one has a radio marker that sends signals to the base, thus allowing the system to locate each bird’s exact location and tell them to fly on a pre-programmed path, so after all of this time, early attempts at flying like a bird were not bird brained, it was just a question of scale, we just can not flap quick enough!
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