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™.
Imagine a
world with elevators that rose independently for thousands of feet into the
air. These elevators are solar powered
and free to use for anyone. Instead of
floor stops the elevators have off ramps that lead away from the elevators in
all directions. Some lead to other
elevators and some back to the ground but there are so many of them that it is
easy to get to where ever you want to go.
The
elevators are scattered around the countryside and close enough together that
it is possible to start at one elevator, ride up it and take a ramp that goes
to another elevator but is sloped so that all you have to do is roll down the
ramp with nothing but gravity to propel you.
By using successive elevators and ramps, it is possible to travel for as
long as you want on no fuel.
OK, that’s a
good start for a science fiction story.
But let’s add a couple of details to make it more interesting. First, the elevators and ramps are invisible. They work the same but you can’t see
them. If you are on one and wander off
because you can’t see it, no problem there are enough (invisible) ramps that
you won’t fall and you can even take the ramp back onto the elevator, if you
can find it.
And one more
thing, the elevators don’t start at the ground level. They start at some height above the
ground. You can’t tell how high, because
they are invisible.
So, how to
get to the elevators? One way might be
to climb up on to some high place and find a ramp. This (invisible) ramp might take you to an
elevator or it might not. Sometimes you
might see someone else in an invisible elevator going up so you can take the
ramp that goes there. If not, you just
have to guess which ramp goes to the (invisible) elevator.
Another way
of course is to use some sort of powered machine to take you up to the elevator
and drop you off there. This might take
wandering around till you ran into an elevator, but it would be more efficient
than just rolling down random ramps hoping to get lucky.
All that is
fine and the makings for a good game or sport, but it’s not really useful as a
way to travel. It’s not practical, for
one thing, the elevators have two other characteristics, they are not fixed in
place and they are not even always there.
As mentioned, they are solar powered so if there is no solar energy,
they don’t run and how many there are and how fast or powerful they are; is solely
(pun intended) dependent on the solar energy available. Too, they tend to move around since they are
not fixed to the ground.
Now, even
though this may sound like an imaginary world, it isn’t. It is the real world we live in. And while the conditions make this elevator /
ramp system impractical as transportation for us humans, it is in fact the very
system used by thousands of flying creatures. The astute reader will by now have understood
that I am describing thermal soaring as done by soaring birds and humans in
various flying machines, humans for sport and birds as a way of life.
It is often
speculated that birds have the capability to “see” the thermal elevators. Whether or not they can, it is clear (again
pun) that we humans cannot. For us to get
to a point where soaring becomes a practical mode of travel rather than a leisure
time activity one thing only is needed, the ability to see the thermals. This is a fairly simple technological problem
and the solution is at hand.
So, I've been pretty inactive here lately. Haven't had much to write about that was all that new and exciting. Ran short of money to do my own thing and my health hasn't been that good leaving me with little energy to write. But lots of time for scouring the net for interesting new tech. I keep up the conversation at Flapping Wings Forum but even that's been quiet.
So it was really exciting to finally see something that made me sit up and grin big. As a soaring pilot, I've thought about the problem of finding lift when it is invisible. You can guess where it might be, ridge lift is on the windward side of a ridge, hence the name. Thermal lift however may start out associated with a dark field or parking lot but it rises and drifts in unpredictable ways. Unless you can spot a bird, other glider or trash sucked up in the thermal, the only way you have to find them is just luck.
Thermals can be huge and powerful or light and small, but a good pilot can use them as free fuel, if he can find them. I have stood on the mountain so many times and watched people dive off in a hit or miss attempt to find a thermal before they find the ground. Some will get lucky and "get up" while others fly right by and "go down". A lot of it is experience in knowing where to look. Smart pilots watch what is happening and mark the best spots before launch by seeing what the others do.
It's a good feeling to get off and hook one, be climbing out while everyone else "hits the ground". Not so great to miss it and have to break down in the hot midday sun. Of course aero-towing has changed a lot of that for the flat land fliers. The tug pilot usually tries to drop you off in your first thermal and you start with a couple of grand to work with, but still after that you're on your own.
Over the years I though hard about how to see thermals. I've imagined wearing special goggles that overlay the view in front of you with indicators of rising and sinking air. I've had hints but never really knew enough to imagine how it could be done. One thing I know is that air of different temperatures transmits light differently. Just like light going from air to water bends it so that a straight stick in water looks bent, where air of different temperatures meet, the light is bent there too.
We see this all the time but either don't notice it or it does not matter except to give another indication of how hot it is. The shimmer effect and the mirage are the result of air being heated by the sun. It is concentrated near the surface of a parking lot or the hood of a car. Sometimes you see it over a radiator or heater and it can be seen in the shadow of the heat rising from a candle. But the effect is only visible to our eyes when the temperature difference is great.
Even a powerful thermal rising a thousand feet per minute or greater is the result of temperature differences that are too small to see let alone feel. We can't see them. Until now.
What we are looking for is not to see the air itself, what we want to see is the effect, we want to see how the stick is bent at the water line. We want to see how the background is "shimmered" by the distortion of the difference in refractive index of the air.
But there are lots of other things that move slightly or change in other ways so tiny that we can't visually pick it up. The video at the bottom of the page talks about such things and explains them so I don't need to. It is the work of MIT scientists.
In a nut shell, they have figured out how to take video imaging and pixel by pixel, amplify small changes. Do watch it. It has nothing to do with flying at all and the only thing in the article that made me realize what they had was this image:
That is a picture of a thermal. It's just one tiny shot from the video. Most of the rest is showing how they can take video of a persons face and show the tiny movements and color changes caused the person's pulse. This will have valuable uses in medicine for sure.
But now I can imagine a viewer that I can use on the hill to view the valley and watch in real time how the thermals are forming and moving out in front. I can see using a radio to direct pilots right to them. And in the future, I can see those thermal goggles become a reality.
A team of Yamaha motorcycle designers have put their experience to the test in a new field by developing an ultralight airplane that’s powered by a simple set of pedals – just like your bike! Constructed from superlight polystyrene and carbon fiber, the plane weighs only 81 pounds despite a wingspan of 117 feet. Encouraged by mostly successful test flights, Team Aeroscepsy will attempt to set a new world record by flying Gokurakutombo (which means “happy-go-lucky” – and apparently also “happy dragonfly” in Japanese) 75 miles over the Pacific Ocean.
Eighty one pounds! You could power this thing with a rechargeable drill motor. It looks terribly weak, like you could break it by sneezing on it but still an incredible job.
This is truly extraordinary: Jan Scheuermann, a 52-year-old quadriplegic woman, has gained full control of a robotic arm. Not just simple commands, but truly complete control with "skill and speed almost similar to that of an able-bodied person."
"It seems that a future in which we can replace a limb with a robotic version, just like Luke Skywalker got a new hand in Star Wars, is nearer than we previously thought."
It's been down for a few days now and it's been missed. We've been noticing a lot of SPAM postings lately and I suspected it was under attack.
I just got a relpy from Nathan Chronister that explained:
Nathan Chronister <nathan@ornithopter.org>
2:22 PM (3 minutes ago)
to me
I apologize for the break in the forum. I was
trying to update the forum software, so it would filter spam better.
Unfortunately something went wrong and now it is not working. I don't know
what's going to happen, because I'm waiting to hear from technical
support.
Most human-like robots don't even attempt biological accuracy, because replicating every muscle in the body isn't necessary for a functional humanoid. Even biomimetic robots based on animals don't attempt to replicate every anatomical detail of the animals they imitate, because that would needlessly complicate things. That said, there is much to be learned from how muscle groups move and interact with the skeleton, which is why a team at Tokyo University's JSK Lab has developed what could be considered the world's most anatomically correct robot to date.
This week Cyberdyne unveiled a robotic exoskeleton called HAL (Hybrid Assistive Limb) that allows its wearer to carry superhuman loads while shielding them from radiation. With the Fukushima nuclear disaster still fresh in Japan’s national memory, the research team designed HAL to aid workers in dismantling the damaged power plant. The most incredible part is that the suit can be controlled by brainwaves! A network of sensors monitors electric signals coming from the user’s brain and uses them to activate the robot’s limbs in unison with the worker’s, allowing them to move without supporting the suit’s weight. As such, the 130-pound suit is barely noticeable to those wearing it.
OK, here's a thought. At sanctuaries all over the country where they tend to injured wild animals, they often have birds that have had damage to one of their wings and therefore can never fly again much less be set free. How about someone designs a wing prosthesis for them?
This film is nicely done with some incredible inflight view points on
flying birds. Click it to see what I mean. You have camera angles that
look like they could only have been shot from another bird, except for
one thing. The camera is perfectly steady.
Here is part one of it on Youtube: (follow the links for the other segments)
Area promoters saw White's experiments as a way to draw tourists to
St. Augustine and win space in newspapers throughout the country.
Almost every story in The Record mentioned the number of people
reading about White and St. Augustine in newspapers around the country.
Several movie and newsreel companies took footage of White and his
ornithopter.
Wright towed White's plane using a "high-powered roadster, which
accelerated at a fast clip in a short distance." Usually, he had a
police motorcycle escort for the towing operations.
Karl brought this back to my attention with a link at his Great Blue Machine. I have a very personal connection with St. Augustine having mis-spent much of my youth around there in pursuit of surf and romance. I still go there to surf and visit old friends.
I had heard of George White and seen the pictures before but somehow didn't really catch my attention.
Its an interesting story and I plan to look more into it next time I'm down there. I suspect that the claims of his success are exaggerated because if he had really such capabilities then certainly more would have come of it. as it is, there don;t seem to be any in flight pictures and although there are supposed to be some video of his flights I can't locate any on the web.
Still, from the look of his machine, he was on the right track. But he like those before him and up until recently, didn't have the technology in materials that we do now.
What can one do with a robot suit? Well, it's certainly not limited to just lifting sacks of rice, but that was exactly what we got to do at CEATEC courtesy of Koba Lab from Tokyo University of Science. First seen in 2009, the magic behind this 9kg kit are the pair of pneumatic artificial muscles (aka McKibben artificial muscles) on the back, which are made by industrial equipment manufacturer Kanda Tsushin. When pressurized with air using electrical components from KOA Corporation, the lightweight, loosely-woven PET tubes contract and consequently provide support to the user's back, shoulders and elbows. As such, our arms were able to easily hold two more sacks of rice (making it a total of 50kg) until the demonstrator deflated the muscles. Check out our jolly hands-on video after the break.
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