Festo Decodes Bird Flight

Flying like birds is one of the oldest dreams of man kind. And back in 1490 Leonardo Da Vinci’s flying machine concept brought us closer to achieving bird flight. Now engineers of Festo’s Bionic Learning Network achieved this amazing feat. Check out this concept animation.

Festo’s flying bird (SmartBird), and its design inspired by herring gull. SmartBird weights only 0.45kg and can start, fly and land autonomously. The bird is powered with with a two stage helical gear motor with reduction ratio of 1:45.

SmartBird-Internal-Parts

Its internal parts and structures are made of light weight carbon fibre. And it consumes 23W from two lithium polymer accumulator cells. SmartBird have an electromechanical efficiency of 45% and aerodynamic efficiency of 80%.