Posted on 01/31/2007 4:23:08 PM PST by Jet Jaguar
Scientists in Britain have figured out how insects fly, bringing bee-sized surveillance aircraft a step closer to reality.
Experts from the University of Bath in southwest England have studied insect flight in the hope of discovering groundbreaking ways to build tiny aircraft that could be attached with cameras and sensors.
Scientists hope the discovery will help construct minature aircraft that could be used for reconnaissance in areas such as traffic monitoring, border surveillance, fire and rescue operations, and even spying.
Bath boffins found that bee wings are rigid at the front and flexible at the back. The structure is the most efficient for generating maximum vortices, or spinning masses of air. The vortices generate lift and keep the insects in the air.
"This is a very important step forward in understanding how we can create tiny aircraft that could be so useful for us," said Professor Ismet Gursul, from the University of Bath's Department of Mechanical Engineering, who headed the team.
"Large aircraft like the ones we fly in don't produce vortices from propulsion, so they can have fixed wings and engines.
"We have found that smaller ones will have to take a leaf out of nature's book if they are to work efficiently.
"Our work will make the goal of tiny aircraft, perhaps eventually only the size of bees, a step closer."
Some tiny aircraft measuring a few square centimetres have already been made in the United States, but they could only stay airborne for a few minutes.
The Bath team's work would enable such machines to stay in the air for longer, though Gursul said more work was required on finding ways to power the aircraft.
The machines could be used as spy planes, capturing detailed footage of battlegrounds, avoiding the risk involved in deploying human scouts on reconnaissance missions, the BBC reported.
Gursul was to give a public lecture at the university Wednesday on his vortex flows work.
I worked with a student that was doing his doctorate in insect wing beat frequencies. He used the giant bumblebee which aerodynamically shouldn't be able to fly. Turns out they have something like a physiological clutch that engages as they warm up by beating their wings. His idea was to be able to ID flying jobbers by their beat frequency.
No back to the topic :-)
Not that you want to kill dragonfly. Dragonfly eats mosquito.
Propulsion issues aside, just how do these folks intend to stabilize the images which these micro-spy cams would send back?
Not an engineer, simply an inquiring mind here. :)
bump for later reading
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