Fully Autonomous Flapping-wing MAV Is As Light As 4 Sheets of A4 Paper 79
Hallie Siegel writes "According to its developers, the DelFly Explorer is the first flapping wing Micro Air Vehicle (MAV) that is able to fly with complete autonomy in unknown environments. Weighing just 20 grams and with a wingspan of 28cm, it is equipped with an onboard stereo vision system. The DelFly Explorer can perform an autonomous take-off, keep its height, and avoid obstacles for as long as its battery lasts (~9 minutes). All sensing and processing is performed on board, so no human or offboard computer is in the loop."
Four Sheets? (Score:5, Funny)
I can fly when I'm only three sheets to the wind.
Fun! (Score:2)
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This is very cool. They could probably sell tens of thousands to kids (like me) if they need money.
Or you could buy my Paper Aeroplane (TM) for half the price? Just needs a gentle push and will fly for 6 seconds (results may vary).
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Then why does my airplane always go straight to the floor?
I want my money back!
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In anticipation... (Score:5, Funny)
In anticipation of the coming holy war, may I fire the first nuke by stating categorically and unequivocally that metric paper sizes are the correct ones and everything else is stupid.
Sorry, it's just that I've always wanted to push that button.
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Re:In anticipation... (Score:5, Informative)
Um, are you sure? If by "room" you mean surface area, A4 paper is slightly larger than letter.
A4 = 210 x 297 mm = 62,370 mm^2
Letter = 215.9 x 279 mm = 60,322 mm^2 (rounded to nearest mm^2)
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WTF is "letter" paper anyway, and why do all my printers insist on using it as the default no matter how many times I try to configure them to A4?
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That's 215.9mm x 279.4mm for those of you living in the civilized world. Slightly wider and not quite as long as an A4, but generally comparable.
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Back in old times, when we were behind Iron Curtain and in few years afterwards, Pen&Paper RPG books were precious commodity. Imagine having to spend half a month salary for a single book. So 'secondary' market was thriving, with somebody buying a book and then everybody else photocopying it over and over. Unfortunately, photocopiers were A4, while most RPG books were in letter format, which was causing ugly black borders on top and bottom and angry stares from the shop owner, who was using a lot more t
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That's kind of interesting, actually.
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Amen, brother. I believe in the area we can't see. Letter has the larger spiritual area! Made from the one true tree!
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Your scribblings may be only sacred enough for letter-sized-paper, but my scribblings are so sacrosant that they require Foolscap Paper to properly represent their gravity.
Re:In anticipation... (Score:5, Funny)
metric paper sizes are the correct ones and everything else is stupid.
I have discovered a truly marvelous proof of this, which the margins on this A4 sheet of paper are unfortunately too narrow to contain.
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Touche sir, touche.
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But 13 is congruent with lunar orbits per year!
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Let 'er rip :)
I mean, obviously the number ten and unit sizes that are useful to humans are simply logical outpourings of nature, not simply another set of arbitrary measures ...
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What's a "metric"?
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An unimpressive illusion.
A "meh" trick.
Meh.
4 sheets of A4? How much is it in a sane unit? (Score:3)
How much does it weigh in a sane unit like dynes?
They don't even say what weight paper they're using, so the mass could be off by an order of magnitude if you use the wrong one.
Re:4 sheets of A4? How much is it in a sane unit? (Score:4, Funny)
20g, so that's 4 nickels according to how an old roommate weed dealer calibrated his scale.
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Sure, AC. Sure.
We believe you, really! It was your, uh, "roommate" with the side-biz.
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How much does it weigh in a sane unit?
Approximately 4.3 nano-Libraries of Congress.
Re:4 sheets of A4? How much is it in a sane unit? (Score:5, Funny)
4 sheets of A4? How much is it in a sane unit?
We are talking about 2.75577828e-9 of a fully loaded jumbo jet! Wow, that's light!
If you need area, it's 0.0000152737 of a football field.
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Pssssh, get rid of all those silly metric units like Dynes and A4 paper. A large number of us here are in the good ol' US of A and hereby demand that this be rewritten in terms of Imperial or US customary units - how about sheets of Letter paper?
Re:4 sheets of A4? How much is it in a sane unit? (Score:5, Informative)
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Four sheets of A4 is one sheet of A2. If you are going to go ISO 216, you might as well go whole hog.
Interesting (Score:2)
Looks like a project from MAKE Magazine.
Very cool, and I assume that in a few months I'll be able to buy this from a kiosk at the Mall.
I'm wondering (Score:2)
Re:I'm wondering (Score:4, Funny)
twelve
Useless (Score:1)
Assistant professor demonstrates useless device.
Where are the news here?
Re:Useless (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Useless (Score:1)
No, it will not. We've already have all kinds of drones that are actually functional. This device cannot carry any payload, hence it is useless.
Re: Useless (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Useless (Score:2)
It cannot carry a real camera...
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Re: Useless (Score:2)
a camera where a human can tell what it is seeing
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Re: Useless (Score:2)
I'm not sure. I can barely see anything.
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After marvelling, compare with a housefly (or similar) to see how far behind we are in terms of technology.
"AI" (including basic prediction), navigation, collision avoidance, flight performance (including flight time, speed and range, acceleration/"gees"), location of fuel and raw fuel conversion tech, self-manufacture (including autonomous miner bot aka maggot and fly-factory - pupae), etc. All in a 12 milligram package (typical).
An unladen honeybee is about 80mg.
Also compare with the smallest bird in the
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An unladen honeybee is about 80mg.
Is that an African or European honeybee?
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-- Napoleon I
Please simplify (Score:1)
You mean weighs as much as 1 sheet of A2 paper...
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Light the paper on fire and LET IT FLY!!!
Huh? (Score:2)
Fully Autonomous Flapping-wing MAV
WTF does its guidance have to do with its propulsion method...?! (Seriously, assholes [editors!]!)
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The flapping allows flying at lower speed, unless you have a helicopter, which is more difficult to control.
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I don't knock their work ... :)
All that needs doing is adding a helium ballon with additional battery payload. As long as the entire system is neutrally bouyant, this could hover for hours, streaming video. Even follow its owner around... Kinda like the "kino" orb in the Stargate Universe TV series, but with wings :)
Delfly? Are they ST:Voyager fans? (Score:2)
This [memory-alpha.org] was the first thing I thought of.
Okay... so maybe I'm the fan. Still found it hard to ignore that Delfly sounds like an abbreviated form of "Delta Flyer".
Wow (Score:2)
Re:Wow (Score:5, Insightful)
So, it can turn on, fly at a certain height, and avoid things - all for 9 minutes. I mean, yeah that's sorta cool how they utilize the stereo vision, and that it's got the ability to slow one if it's "wings" in order to avoid things. But it looks like it's only going to work indoors, with all fans off. Being that there's no way to control it, seems like it'd be less than entertaining, other than to present to an unsuspecting audience, like slashdot. Other than that, troll me into oblivion, I suspect it's lame.
If you think that's lame, I heard that some idiot bike mechanic brothers demonstrated a so-called flying machine that could barely get 10 feet off the ground and couldn't even stay in the air for 60 seconds. What a joke! It's clear that it's doomed to fail since the early prototype was so limited.
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Why are you modded insightful?
the idiot bike mechanic didn't demonstrate their flying machine for 3 years so they could work the bugs out of it. When they finally did demonstrate to the public a flying machine it took off from a level surface flew around the field a couple of times and landed where it started from. Then they started taking passengers up.
Now a days their first flight would have ben hailed, scrutinized and when they didn't deliver a fully functional fighter jet 6 months later ridiculed.
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Really, if they maybe added this winged design to a hot-air balloon, they may have something.
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Another key point here (with both devices that we're talking about) is that they both have to fly indoors. Usually when that's the case (especially with that flying bike, holy shit it's HUGE!) it's due to 'wind being an obstacle'.
Just because it has to fly indoors today doesn't mean that it couldn't some day be constructed to allow outdoors use. It's not like there are no "craft" [wikipedia.org] that fly outdoors with large, fragile wings.
The heavier than air craft built by bicycle mechanics I was talking about was not a pedal powered aircraft [popularmechanics.com] but rather, a much earlier model of airplane [wikipedia.org]
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It's not like there are no "craft" [wikipedia.org] that fly outdoors with large, fragile wings.
Ooo, no fair. You're comparing a butterfly - a part of the bio-logic of Nature itself, evolved from the very fiber of the physical universe's intelligence over billions of years - to some rig that was recently"invented" by humans? Come on man. You may as well compare a lighter to our sun, or a sand castle to a mountain. I'm not trying to offend you, sir, but silly indeed.
In order for what man has come up with to achieve flight using, the basic construction of the item in question in this article, out
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Look, I'm not trying to down-play the invention itself, it's got a few good things about it, like I said, the radio-vision is cool. However I'll bet that in the end, all that gets used is the radio-vision, as the whole battle of "lift" has already been fought out in all practical manner possible. These days there are simply to many requirements for safety reasons for some "spinning
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I bet you $200 that you'll never ever ever see on out in the real world (I'll give you 10 years - and I expect US dollars).
Look, I'm not trying to down-play the invention itself, it's got a few good things about it, like I said, the radio-vision is cool. However I'll bet that in the end, all that gets used is the radio-vision, as the whole battle of "lift" has already been fought out in all practical manner possible.
That's the point. It's not meant to be a finished product that Amazon will use to deliver packages to you tomorrow, it's a proof of concept that uses some interesting technology. A completely autonomous, obstacle avoiding, flapped wing aircraft that weighs less than 20g is awfully impressive.
These days there are simply to many requirements for safety reasons for some "spinning winged" craft to make a breakthrough.
Good thing it's not a "spinning winged" craft.
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Good thing it's not a "spinning winged" craft.
There are two wheels that spin that the wings are attached to, and in turn (no pun intended), flap the wings. I put it in quotes because I don't know what else to call it. What do you call it?
The Flying Fapping What? (Score:2)
Not sure I want anything fapping around my backyard, thank-you-very-much.
Stereo (Score:1)
I'm not sure how much stereo is in that vision (Score:2)