Chasing Nature

[KenWittlief]

Bio mimicry: copying the engineering principles of biology into man made machines.

Sometimes this is a good thing and sometimes its not. For many years people tried to make flying machines that mimicked birds wings, and it could not be done, for two reasons: 1. Birds alter the shape of their wings in flight by applying pressure to groups of feathers and 2. Birds flap their wings with muscles, and they did not have machines that could duplicate the power and actions of muscles.

For many years this held back mans first successful powered and controlled flight. When the Wright brothers built a wind tunnel and experimented with wing shapes and wing warping, then they made the breakthrough that led to Kittyhawk.

But other times Bio mimicry pays off. The robot that honda designed that dances and walks is very power hungry. A university group in the US designed a walking robot that copies the way a human body 'falls forward' between each step, and as a result this robots walking method is 3 times more energy effecient than Honda's bot.

[petek]

I don't want to post too much of a spoiler since this show will be on for another month before the next episode, but it seemed that the trigger for closing the claw was the biggest problem the team faced. Well, maybe the second biggest - on one of the Stanford pages one of the students said that they only got to engineer for a few hours a day because of all the re-shoots of "reality".

A neat factoid from the show: in nature, the bird closes its claw in about 20 msec.

[Adam Y.]

Originally Posted by KenWittlief

Bio mimicry: copying the engineering principles of biology into man made machines.

Sometimes this is a good thing and sometimes its not. For many years people tried to make flying machines that mimicked birds wings, and it could not be done, for two reasons: 1. Birds alter the shape of their wings in flight by applying pressure to groups of feathers and 2. Birds flap their wings with muscles, and they did not have machines that could duplicate the power and actions of muscles.

I heard bird and dredged up this:Scientific America Transcript
PS. I think they engineers are having problems with the whole getting something to fly like a bird.