[HN Gopher] Flapping-wing robot achieves self-takeoff by adoptin...
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Flapping-wing robot achieves self-takeoff by adopting
reconfigurable mechanisms
Author : PaulHoule
Score : 77 points
Date : 2025-10-08 20:30 UTC (7 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.science.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.science.org)
| mhb wrote:
| The essential missing (or maybe I just missed it) video:
|
| https://youtu.be/tD5I6x_bPkw?si=KFTx89LmPjrVu5Ib
|
| Edit - better video:
|
| https://scx2.b-cdn.net/gfx/video/2025/bird-like-robot-with-n...
| 05 wrote:
| It's a render. A real life takeoff video is still missing..
| yorwba wrote:
| Movie S5 from the supplementary material:
| https://imgur.com/a/LVb2m22
| 05 wrote:
| Looks super cool. Now I want to build one and stick an FPV
| camera on it:)
| orthecreedence wrote:
| You can see the string attached to it! Do they think we're
| stupid??
| yorwba wrote:
| The string goes slack when it lifts off, so it's not like
| it's being pulled up. I think it's there to catch it in
| the inevitable case of a crash. And maybe they haven't
| figured out how to land gracefully yet.
| monooso wrote:
| I look forward to Boston Dynamics turning this into something
| that will haunt my nightmares.
| bigjohnjacob wrote:
| The birds aren't real people are gonna love this.
| ACCount37 wrote:
| Pretty cool. Just two servos per wing, with one shared BLDC motor
| to provide the power to the strokes. That's comparable to what
| normal fixed wing drones have. Extreme mechanical complexity
| though.
|
| I can't see this being practical, but it makes for one hell of a
| tech demo. Wish there was footage available. It feels really
| incomplete without a video of this bird taking off, flying and
| landing.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| I saw recently the Chinese (The Chinese!) are experimenting in
| this area (and with flying insect machines?) -- perhaps for
| surveillance drones that will look for all practical purposes
| like an ordinary bird/insect.
| ACCount37 wrote:
| The whole "surveillance drone" thing is so overrated. No one
| gives a shit, really.
|
| People make things like insect drones and bird drones because
| they're cool. That's it. That's the only practical purpose.
| Anything else is flimsy justification, sometimes employed to
| get the funding to do the cool thing.
| ge96 wrote:
| I used to be obsessed with rc ornithopters but I always thought
| the main problem was that hulking gear ratio/mechanism and the
| oscillation making it not really great for flight compared to
| fixed wing/propeller driven.
|
| This one (servo driven) is really light compared to the usual RC
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TuOw6BUOo78
|
| This guy does great work, it's like his obsession
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QrB1pKInIu0
| PaulHoule wrote:
| I had a really stylish robot dragonfly that I got from Big Lots
| at a huge discount, trouble was it could not fly in any amount
| of wind and the only place I could fly it was in Barton Hall.
| ge96 wrote:
| I might know the one you're talking about, did it have a fan
| as a rudder?
|
| Oh speaking of dragonfly-like ornithopter this one is
| hardcore https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZCrS52sM3Zs
|
| Reminds me of that Chicken Run movie ha
| PaulHoule wrote:
| It was this
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FlyTech_Dragonfly
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p7j6KPbn4eE
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Yeah, totally subscribed to "that guy". I think he's been
| experimenting with ducted fans (kind of not ornithopters) and
| also dragon-fly type of flight with four wings (entomopter?).
| asdff wrote:
| Advanced bird drones must be born secret technology. It makes
| little sense how so much can be understood about birds and yet
| there is no perfect bird replica on the market aside from these
| pared down maker lab tier efforts.
|
| And indeed, lending further credence to the born secret idea is
| that the CIA has been experimenting on bird drones since at
| least the 1960s (1), and this was only revealed to the public
| in 2013. The state of the art must be so far advanced. What a
| prize for an intelligence agency to be able to create a
| surveillance system where it does not matter if it is detected
| on radar, or visualized at all because it looks exactly like
| indigenous bird populations.
|
| 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_AQUILINE
| fijiaarone wrote:
| Robots aren't real.
| jacquesm wrote:
| What an amazing quality article.
| ElijahLynn wrote:
| Truth, so much detail and depth.
| ElijahLynn wrote:
| For the videos: search the page for "Movies S1 to S5" And click
| download to download a zip file of five videos. The fifth video
| shows the actual flight. Albeit, there's a string attached to the
| top, which doesn't appear to be helping it, but I'm not certain.
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(page generated 2025-10-15 23:01 UTC)