Daedelus' Notebook

What its all about

Time for a new sticky.  This is a new introduction for the blog to try to restate the goals and give a little progress report of the last years work.

First, the ultimate goal is the facilitation of the fulfillment of a dream that mankind has had since before we could write things down.  I'm talking about gaining the ability to fly like a bird.  That phrase is key, like a bird. 

It is my opinion based in personal experience and a growing knowledge of current technology, that it is possible right now to reverse engineer the structure and function of large birds in order to create a man carrying craft that has all of the flight capability of a large soaring bird and that is controlled by a pilot in ways that mimic the control and precision of those birds.

Simply put, I'm proposing the construction of a wearable winged exoskeleton.  In the posts of this blog, you will find articles describing the kinds of technology, in prosthetics, man magnifier exoskeletons, computer capabilities, materials and power systems that can be adapted to create what I call for lack of a better name, the Man Bird™.

Blog Wall

I seem to have hit it.  But I've got a lot going on, I'm relocating.  I'm moving back to Henson's Gap, TN to a small apartment where I hope to be able to concentrate and focus on all the tasks I see ahead. Henson's is the Tennessee Tree Toppers hang gliding site so I'll be getting some more inspiration from watching real flying. Might even have to dust off my own wings again.

Lately I've felt drawn in so many directions what with Blender, the Kinect, the Arduino and on and on. Most of the writing I've done lately has been over at the Flapping Wings Forum arguing and discussing with KJELL, henryk and the others.  But even that has dried up in the last couple of days.

I read a good book on memory called Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything (Kindel eddition so no you can't borrow it.) because I was having trouble remembering all the Blender commands, menus and key shortcuts.  It may help, I did learn a technique for remembering lists like shopping lists called the Memory Palace.  I did enjoy the book.  I am hoping I can use it to help me learn spanish.  I've done the RosettaStone package, but without anyone to practice with, I can't seem to retain the words.  We'll see.

I havent even scratched the surface of the Kinect yet and now there is this LEAP device that does something similar and is a lot cheaper.  Don't know how I'll fit it in.  I probably need to just stop and limit myself to just a few areas and master them for a while.  I haven't even touched the IMU rig I got a while back.  I must have some sort of ADHD, every time some new technology pops up, I go running off after it.  Oooh shiney!

Researchers create brain-computer interface that bypasses spinal cord injury paralysis | ExtremeTech

The researchers have created a neuroprosthesis that combines a brain-computer interface (BCI) that’s wired directly into 100 neurons in the motor cortex of the subject, and a functional electrical stimulation (FES) device that’s wired into the muscles of the subject’s arm. When the subject tries to move his arm or hand, that cluster of around 100 neurons activates, creating a stream of data which can then be read and analyzed by the BCI to predict what muscles the subject is trying to move, and with what level of force. This interpreted data is passed to the FES, which then triggers the right muscles to perform the desired movement.

 

via www.extremetech.com

So, if your arms get tired, you can switch to purely mental control of the wing, no?

Exoskeleton Videos

It's been a little while since I checked up on what is going on with projects like the HULC by Lockheed Martin and other "wearable robots" So I thought I'd see what Google could find in the Youtube videos.  And again I am amazed. Way too many to embed here, so I'll just post the Google search link for HULC videos and let you check them out for yourself.

If after watching a few of these, you can't answer the central question of this blog, "if we can build robotic legs and arms, is there any reason why we can't build wings as well?" with a resounding NO!, then you are in the wrong blog.

I'll go ahead and embed this one anyway. It really shows what is possible.

 

I want to know when the consumer version will be out and what the price will be.

Membrane vs. Feathered Wings

I posted this over at the Flapping Wings Forum but I want it here too because I think it clinches the argument.

Thinking more about this membrane vs. feathered wing argument, I recalled something that will make a big difference. When I got into hang gliding professionally in 1979, the gliders we were flying were pretty simple. Leading edges, keel and crossbar tubes, a flat cut and sewn sail with pockets for battens to reduce flutter and wrinkles and stainless steel cables were the gist of it. They were basic membrane wings. For a pilot my size, 170# or so, a typical glider would have around 230 square feet of sail. This was state of the art in 1979. They would climb in thermals quite well, but forward penetration was poor. Another way to put it was that both forward speed and the resulting glide ratio was maybe 8 or 9 to one.

The Flapping Wings Forum has been lively

I have a bookmark that takes me to the Flapping Wings Forum of the Ornithopter Zone site and shows me threads that have been updated in the last 30 days.  

There have been some good conversations going on over there lately and I've been in the thick of some of them.  In fact I've been doing so much writing over there that I have felt like I've neglected this blog between that and the Blender tutorials I've been working on.

So if you need a fix and there is nothing new here for you, check it out over there.  My own 'Paradigm Shift' thred is here.  It's up to 17 pages so far.

Birds of Prey in Stunning "Slow Motion"

via www.youtube.com

Been watching a few of these slow motion videos of birds in flight. It's amazing what you can see in the movement of their wings to get them exactly where they want to be.

Hat tip to Karl at the Great Blue Machine for reminding me to look at some of these.

I'm no photographer, but this makes me want one of the new digital highspeed cameras.  There is one, a v710 that claims to be able to shoot 1,700,000 frames per second.  According to the video that Karl posted though,
100 fps ought to be enough to capture the large raptors in sufficient detail.

Imagine painting white reference dots on a tame bird and using video of it to capture and map the motion to the Virtual Man Bird™.

Comments Welcome

Blog traffic is tapering off a bit now since the all time high the day that the Smeets hoax video went viral.  Could be that I'm preoccupied with some of the technologies that I've been trying desperately to learn, like Blender, Arduino and Kinect and have neglected my regular posting.  Whatever the reason, it's still higher than before but comments remain low.

I just wanted to say, that I am really interested in feedback.  Thoughts and critiques of my arguments and observations are appreciated.  Suggestions on anything you think might be relevant too could be helpful.  I can't possibly find everything out there so if you come across anything that might help push the envelope please feel free to jump in.

Thanks,

Daedelus

Support the Cause

I've added a Donate button to the blog so that anyone who feels like it can help out with making the Man Bird™ project a reality.  So far, I've been taking care of the minor costs of running the blog and some of the not so minor costs of acquiring new hardware and software for my research.  Fortunately I am in a position to do that. 

I have also been helping Ari with cash to support his efforts to bring the Virtual Man Bird™ to life.  He has been working for months driven by his faith in the project that rivals my own.  In fact his efforts have greatly exceeded mine in terms of shear output.  I've tried to post examples of his amazing work here and I look forward to his updates like a kid waiting for Christmas morning.

So the reason for the donate button is to give you the reader a chance to contribute to Ari's efforts in a real way.  What ever you can spare will be appreciated. Contributions will be forwarded to Ari.

Let's fly this thing!

Kinect for Windows (K4W)

Got my Kinect for Windows (K4W) sensor software up and running. Finally. Had some issues as Microsoft made some changes that meant the K4W would not run the same software as the Kinect for Xbox (K4X) original. A lot of searching the web and I found a guy in Japan who has put out a 'bridge' that makes it work. So far so good. Now on to some examples and learning to fly this puppy.

All this is getting ready to try the Bloop trick that I saw a while back.

Flugversuch

via www.youtube.com

Pretty crude, but an interesting exercise. I wrote about these costume wings here

Articulated Wings

and also about the use of EMG to control prosthetics here.

EMG Biofeedback

and here

Electromyographic Flight Control

This guy has put the two together using the Arduino microprocessor that I have been working with and wrote about here

Blender, this is Arduino calling, do you read...