Engineers have long looked to the natural world for design inspiration. A few months ago we profiled Blimp Bots at www.robo101.com/ROBOT-NEWS/Lifes_a_Gas.asp - intelligent floating robots that seemed to be inspired by Carl Sagan's gas planet aliens. But what about looking at our own planet's beautiful moving creatures, the denizens of the deep ocean?
Festo, a German airship company, has been building airborne robots inspired by manta rays and jellyfish. They someday hope to scale up these sky fliers to sizes large enough to move humans. The Festo Air Ray is a manta ray-shaped helium filled RC airship that flies by flapping its wings. Watch the stunning video of the Air Ray in motion.
According to the Airshipworld Blog, a site dedicated to disseminating the latest airship news, "This is a really innovative new concept that actually works. The AirRay is unique in that rather than using a propeller, it generates forward power by literally swimming through the air."
Any physicist can tell you that air, like water, is actually a fluid, and thus the same fluid dynamics used by ocean creatures should work well in air (provided they are buoyant enough).
Another airship innovation is the Festo b-IONIC AirFish, a remote controlled airship that uses an electrostatic ion beam propulsion system. NASA has used ion thrusters since the 90s in spacecraft like Deep Space 1 and 2. But Festo engineers discovered that in the atmosphere, the effect could also be used to reduce, and even eliminate, drag if the whole vessel would be enclosed by a ionized plasma bubble. This is a great innovation considering the gigantic surface area and aerodynamic drag of airships. Festo's solution may change how we look at airships. Check out the video of the AirFish.
And finally, at this year's Hannover Messe 2008 (International Industrial Technology Trade Fair), Festo brought a stunning new project with them. The Air Jelly is an airborne jellyfish analogue that gracefully swims through the air. The video on YouTube is breathtaking.
Rather than swimming through water, the AirJelly glides through the air with the aid of its central electric drive and intelligent, adaptive mechanical system. The remote-controlled AirJelly is kept in the air by its helium-filled ballonette.
The AirJelly’s only energy source are two lithium-ion-polymer batteries, to which the central electric drive is attached. This transmits its power to a bevel gear and then to eight spur gears, which drive the eight tentacles of the jellyfish via their respective cranks. Using a peristaltic movement to drive a balloon was previously unknown in the history of aviation. The AirJelly is the first indoor flying object to use such a peristaltic propulsion system.
The AirJelly steers through three-dimensional environments by shifting its weight. Its two servo motors are located at the “North pole” of the jellyfish and controlled proportionally. If the pendulum moves in one direction, the AirJelly’s centre of gravity shifts in this direction – the AirJelly is thus able to swim in any spatial direction. The propulsive force of the drive can be varied by moving the tentacles more quickly or slowly.
