Plenty of robots can fly — but none can fly like a real bird. That is, until Markus Fischer and his team at Festo built SmartBird, a large, lightweight robot, modeled on a seagull, that flies by flapping its wings. A soaring demo fresh from TEDGlobal 2011.
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Intro
Name all the flying machines that you know, or have heard of.
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Watch
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Glossary
- flap – (of a bird) move (its wings) up and down when flying or preparing to fly
- propulsion – the action of driving or pushing forwards
- torsion – the action of twisting or the state of being twisted, especially of one end of an object relative to the other
- efficient – performing or functioning in the best possible manner with the least waste of time and effort; having and using requisite knowledge, skill, and industry; competent; capable
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Think about it
Answer the questions below.
- How do birds fly?
- What did the team use as their role model?
- What kind of company does Markus work with?
- What are the technical specs of the smart bird?
- What do you think are the practical applications of the smart bird?
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Practice makes perfect
Fill in the blank spaces with the words in CAPITAL LETTERS used in appropriate forms.
It is a dream of mankind to fly like a bird. Birds are very _________ AGILITY. They fly, not with rotating components, so they fly only by flapping their wings. So we looked at the birds, and we tried to make a model that is ________POWER, ultralight, and it must have ________ EXCEL aerodynamic qualities that would fly by its own and only by flapping its wings.
So what would be better than to use the herring gull, in its ________ FREE,circling and swooping over the sea,and to use this as a role model?So we bring a team together.There are ________ GENERAL and also ________ SPECIAL in the field of aerodynamics,in the field of building ________ GLIDE. And the task was to build an ultralight indoor-flying model that is able to fly over your heads. So be careful later on.
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Explore it more
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