ZexonaZ: A Parallel World - Maximilian Büsser & Friends

viernes, 9 de septiembre de 2011

A Parallel World - Maximilian Büsser & Friends

The SmartBird: a Flock of (one) Seagull

“I'm like a bird, I'll only fly away,” crooned Portuguese-Canadian songstress Nelly Furtado.

Now, we admit it might be an ever-so-slightly tenuous link, but these titular lyrics from the 32-year-old’s debut hit could plausibly serve as the slogan for German company Festo’s latest ‘Bionic Learning Network’ project.

The industrial automation firm has succeeded in deciphering and then replicating one of the oldest ambitions of humankind – to be able to fly like a bird.
Festo’s SmartBird is an ultralight but powerful flight model with superb aerodynamic qualities and extreme agility that mimic – almost uncannily – a real bird.
It can take off, fly and land autonomously, with no additional drive mechanism. Its wings not only beat up and down, but also twist at specific angles, made possible by an active articulated torsional drive unit, which, in combination with a complex control system, attains an unprecedented level of efficiency in flight operation.

Markus Fischer, Head of Corporate Design at Festo, says: “We built SmartBird because we are a company in the field of automation and we’d like to make very light-weight structures that are energy-efficient, and we’d like to learn more about pneumatics and air-flow phenomena."
“The objective of the project was to construct a bionic bird modelled on the herring gull. The fascination of building an artificial bird that could take off, fly and land by means of flapping wings alone provided the inspiration for our engineers.”
As it stands, however, there are no explicit plans for the SmartBird and Festo has no intention of going into mass-production.

“We don’t want to produce a swarm of SmartBirds,” says Fischer - who presumably meant to say, ‘flock’ of SmartBirds (or perhaps a swarm of IntelligentBees are next). “But we’re trying to transpose the knowledge gained on topics like energy efficiency and lightweight construction to other products from Festo and those of our customers."