Festo's Man Made Smart Bird

The flight of a bird has always been elegant  and human beings have always been astonished by this grace oh its flight . Humans have tried a couple of times to try to imitate this gesture through some robotic technology but have ended up disappointing themselves a couple of times. But now the high tech German company Festo has succeeded in transferring this elegance of flight into a flying robot which is almost a true replica of a seagull.

The robotic bird has a mass of about 485 grams. The robot is made up of ultra light materials like carbon fiber and other  sensitive electronic controls. It not only swaps its wings up and down just like a real bird but also but also twist them at specific angles simply replicating the gestures of a real gull positioning the wings tip at the best angle just for the sake of generating the best lift . There is an active articulated torsional drive at the center of the design with good clever wing joints and sensors which detect the real position of the wings . There is also a low weight motor which consumes a power of about 25 watts. It can be controlled from the ground using a radio controller. The bird also communicates back its flight data to the remote controller so that it could make changes in certain parameters if required .  Festo has been inspired by Leonardo Da Vinci’s ‘rudimentary flapping model’ and the internal mechanics of this flying robot resembles the flying machines designed hundreds of years ago. It is highly efficient aerodynamically. It can take off and land by itself adjusting its tail and head.

It resembles a sea gull and can mistakenly be taken to be a real bird only. It has great applications for military purposes. Since it resembles a bird , if we would mount on it some efficient cameras and GPS system it could be used to give information which would be of immense use. Thus it has the ability to work as an efficient spy. Thus Festo has been able to crack the secret of a bird’s flight.

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