We’re getting closer and closer to a time, where it is difficult to distinguish if we’re watching a living animal or a robot. This video will show you how big the similarities already are.
We must not forget copying the “flapping wing motion” a real bird does is really difficult.
Just how difficult? Well professors S.K. Gupta, Hugh Bruck and their students at the University of Maryland point out the biggest issue:
Creating flying robots that use a bird’s “flapping wing motion” has been a painfully slow process of trial and error. That’s because errors in robotic bird flight cause the robot to crash back to earth, often destroying the entire machine.
Yet, after several years of trial and error testing, they came up with a breakthrough. The key to it was discarding the simultaneous and symmetrical flapping pattern found in birds and replacing it with wings that flap independently of one another.
The robot in the video above is named “Wind Rider“. Cai Yu, the CEO of Bee-eater Technology the company which created this robot bird says the following:
It is just like a real bird – for example, frigate birds can stay in the air for 3 months and some other birds can fly over 10,000 km in 8 days without eating and drinking. It also has the gliding option, so, the efficiency is high
The company presented the robotic bird at the annual World Robot Conference in Beijing, China. The expo lasted from the 19th to 25th August 2019 and the exhibition area covered 52,000 square meters. More than enough space for all these new, freaky robots and drones.
So next time you see a big, white bird flying suspiciously often over your house you know what’s up. The Chinese are spying on you!
