John Pattery: Ornithopter (Robotic Bird)

For ages men and women have studied birds, bats, and beetles, observing and experimenting, attempting to determine what humans must do to fly by flapping. But people can’t fly by flapping: not with wings covering their arms; not with pedalled, chain-driven wings; and, so far, not with internal-combustion engines, either. Nonetheless, the concept of ornithopters continue to hover on the periphery of aeronautical engineering.

An ornithopter is an aircraft that flies by flapping its wings. Designers seek to imitate the flapping-wing flight of birds, bats, and insects. Though machines may differ in form, they are usually built on the same scale as these flying creatures. Most ornithopters these days use a simple crank mechanism for flapping the wings. This doesn't allow much control over how the wings move. Thus, we have designed a mechanism that replicates the flight of a bird in the exact same fashion in an unmanned ornithopter.

This movement that the wing has been designed based on can also be used in a variety of other robots for movements such as the legs of a hexapod.

The uses of an ornithopter are many. The ornithopter can be designed to look like various birds. An artificial predator under the control of an operator causes other birds to remain on the ground so they can be captured for study.

Since ornithopters can be made to resemble birds or insects, they could be used for military applications, such as aerial reconnaissance without alerting the enemies that they are under surveillance.

First Mechanism Testing...