Floating manta ray with beating wing drive

https://www.festo.com/us/en/e/about-festo/research-and-development/bionic-learning-network/highlights-from-2006-to-2009/air-ray-id_33851/

by thunderbong • 3 years ago

83 24 3 years ago

festo.com

RF_Savage• 3 years ago

Festo keeps on impressing with their tech demos. Not only interesting tech, but also good presentation.

tmikaeld• 3 years ago

What is the practical application of such tech?

johndunne• 3 years ago

Pinata 2.0

dragonsky• 3 years ago

Keeping your technician’s excited about working for your company.

ufo• 3 years ago

Tech demo for a robotics company.

abudabi123• 3 years ago

Giant solar powered robo-sunfish for corraling schools of fish in aquaculture is a possibility. Got to move fast and be carbon neutral environment friendly.

aaron695• 3 years ago

This is about (2007)

Cool performance by them - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nTIqV1AloOI

Wish hobbyist would do more of this stuff. It's cool art.

unwind2• 3 years ago

Very cool, I love how life-like and kind of soothing the motion is. And how it's able to flip and fly on its back, really neat!

Also: I just had to look this up since it's always (?) been bugging me: Festo (the company in the OP) founded Festool (the power tool manufacturer known for high quality, systainers, and Apple-esque pricing) [2]. The logos are just soooo similar. Phew, that was calming.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Festo

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Festool

akiselev• 3 years ago

Can’t wait until Dewalt or Makita make a flying manta ray we can actually afford.

alangibson• 3 years ago

And here I thought Festo only made expensive track saws...

etrautmann• 3 years ago

Is festool the same company?

unwind2• 3 years ago

No, but Festool was spun out of/founded by Festo.

rob74• 3 years ago

Actually, they have one of these bionic "showcase projects" every year (really good PR for an otherwise largely unknow company if you ask me): https://www.festo.com/us/en/e/about-festo/research-and-devel...

smusamashah• 3 years ago

Their products are being used by military for spying. Few years ago, their bird was crashed (or was shot down) in Pakistan. https://www.wired.com/2011/08/weird-birdlike-mystery-drone-c...

EDIT: just realized from pictures that even though it looks very similar, they don't look the same. But still it can be a different version from the same company.

qikInNdOutReply• 3 years ago

Fest is a german company, they sell mostly valves and pneumatic automation solutions to german machine building companys. The bionic creatures are a nice gimick, but they are not in any form or shape a finnished product.

cjbgkagh• 3 years ago

The drone in Pakistan was a bird shaped airplane with a prop. An ornithopter is a wildly different machine.

nstart• 3 years ago

Oh my goodness. I finally know who was behind the floating robot at the Dubai museum of the future! Had a chance to visit it last year and their flying robot was the best part of the whole experience :D . Thanks for sharing this. Amazing to see all their other robots at work on YouTube.

amelius• 3 years ago

From watching the video, I wonder: do the wings perform actual work, or is the movement controlled in some other way?

martyvis• 3 years ago

Festo have a long history making technical things fun. As a young teenager some 45 years or so ago, I used to go every year with my toolmaker Dad to the engineering expo in Sydney. I always recall Festo putting various demonstrations of their pneumatic and automation components doing fun things.

MichaelZuo• 3 years ago

Very cool! Does anyone know if there have been similar 'wing drive' ideas in the past?

perilunar• 3 years ago

Well, ornithopters are older than fixed-wing aeroplanes, so yes?

This one has a servo to manually control the wing twist (Fin Ray Effect®!), rather than rely on aeroelastic twisting, so that's novel.

progre• 3 years ago

This thing is featured in the book Zero History by William Gibson

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero_History

alexpotato• 3 years ago

I always wonder what it's like to be working as a non-engineering person at Festo given that:

- they make super cool stuff

- they seem to test anything flying in their indoor lobby

- it seems a lot of their offices have windows pointing toward the lobby

"Oh, look! Today it's a giant floating manta ray!"

fransje26• 3 years ago

Cool stuff. The video has a real 90s vibe though...

Floating manta ray with beating wing drive

Related Stories