
Flying insect-like robot Gimball can crash and recover - poissonpie
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-24758935
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parley
Here's a similar one the Japanese DOD (?) showed off a few years ago, I think,
so I suppose the single-rotor (or dual on same axis) flying sphere with flaps
has been around for a while:
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pF0uLnMoQZA](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pF0uLnMoQZA)

It's also supposed to be able to bump, roll and stuff, but it looks like the
OP has improved on the idea quite a bit with the independent suspension/crash
cage.

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YooLi
Real Genius - 1985

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wfbqJpn8fN8](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wfbqJpn8fN8)

though it did suffer from a launch problem or possibly a design problem... :)

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ksrm
Previous discussion (yesterday):

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6640431](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6640431)

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gannoq
+videos from
[http://weborganizm.org/river/stream/2829](http://weborganizm.org/river/stream/2829)

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sillysaurus2
How do flies do it? They don't have protective cages. Why doesn't a fly's
wings break when it crashes? Why can't we replicate it mechanically?

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snoonan
My initial thought is that insect wings don't rotate, and so can't destroy
themselves so easily. Cheap, powerful rotational motors comes with the risk of
potential for self destruction.

Flapping at that scale is a very hard problem. Apart from the microscopic
flagellum, evolution never managed to produce a rotational motor since it's
super hard to build decoupled components with biological hardware (you need
two stomachs, hearts, etc to keep decoupled parts alive). Emulating a fly's
actual method may be interesting research, but motors are probably better in
the long run than flapping, a complex and difficult hack to the problem of
flight.

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Chestofdraw
Also, flies are tiny and move pretty slowly. A bird doesn't recover from
flying into a wall very well.

