We may be a step closer to building flying machines that can mimic the best aerial artists of the animal kingdom. Biomimetic researchers at New York University say they have made important headway in mechanically replicating how flying creatures like dragonflies and hummingbirds hover and dart about with a precision even the most advanced man-made aircraft lacks.
The team of researchers from NYU's Applied Mathematics Laboratory and Physics Department published new research last week that describes a series of experiments with "a pyramid-shaped object hovering in a vertically oscillating airflow." The kicker—the pyramid flew better bottom-side up than the other way around.
That seems decidedly counterintuitive given that hovering aircraft like helicopters utilize fairly uniform weight distribution that runs towards being bottom heavy, not to mention our predisposition towards thinking in terms of how stability works with land-based structures.
But different forces are at play when it comes to flapping-wing flight. The study's lead author Jun Zhang had an explanation for how his team's little top-heavy paper "bugs" were able to flap about merrily in a wind tunnel, as related by The Register.
"It works somewhat like balancing a broomstick in your hand," Zhang said. "If it begins to fall to one side, you need to apply a force in this same direction to keep it upright."
It turns out that as an inverted pyramid tilts in the air, it generates just such a force.
What we probably won't be seeing anytime soon is a large-scale "ornithopter" based on NYU team's flapping-wing bug design, according to the team. Building such an aircraft would be incredibly expensive and it's not clear that what works on the small scale would work on the large.
But very small, remote-controlled aircraft could be a real possibility because there's currently nothing in our aerial arsenal that comes remotely close to matching, say, a dragonfly's ability to fly and hover very precisely even when buffeted by very strong winds.
In semi-related news, Mattel announced Monday that it will taking pre-orders next month for a "Back to the Future Hover Board." The only catch—it doesn't really hover but rather "will glide over most surfaces" (water being a major exception). Oh, and it makes "multiple whooshing sounds."
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