Focus on Efficiency: Bird Flight Deciphered

June 28, 2011
What can happen if you turn the creativity of your engineers loose to solve a complex automation problem? At its 9th International Press Conference held June 16 in Budapest, Hungary, Festo AG exhibited the results of the latest bionic design from its engineering staffā€”a herring gull that actually flies.

As Festo executives explained, ā€œThe herring gull provides inspiration for new accomplishments in energy efficiency and lightweight design for automation.

Festo calls this technology the Bionic Learning Network, and it first exhibited the bird at the 2011 Hannover Trade Fair. As they explained to the assembled editors, ā€œWith SmartBird, engineers from Festo have succeeded in decoding the flight of birds, thus accomplishing a further breakthrough in automation technology... Festo is providing fresh impulse not only in factory automation, but also in process automation."

Efficiency criteria such as flexibility, low weight in relation to displaced mass, and energy consumption are Festoā€™s focus. ā€œNature shows in highly diverse ways how minimum consumption of energy can yield maximum performance.ā€ said a company spokenman. ā€œFesto learns from natureā€™s principles in order to transfer its strategy of efficiency to automation technology through bionics. Its projects demonstrate new technologies which made their implementation possible and are setting the pace in various fields, from safe automation and intelligent mechatronics solutions up to new drive and handling technologies, energy efficiency and lightweight construction.ā€

The key to understanding bird flight in order to replicate it in a mechatronic automation project includes two features: the active torsion of its wings, which provides the unique movement, and the fact that it dispenses with the use of additional lift devices.

SmartBird flies, glides and sails through the air just like its natural model. Its wings not only beat up and down, but also twist at specific angles. This is made possible by an active articulated torsional drive unit, which in combination with a complex control system makes for unprecedented efficiency in flight operation. Festo has thus succeeded for the first time in attaining an energy-efficient technical adaptation of this model from nature.

The Bionic Learning Networkā€”a collaboration between Festo and universities, institutes and development companiesā€”is an integral part of innovation processes at the company. The Bionic Learning Network also constitutes part of Festoā€™s commitment in the field of basic and advanced technical training.

Sponsored Recommendations

Rock Quarry Implements Ignition to Improve Visibility, Safety & Decision-Making

George Reed, with the help of Factory Technologies, was looking to further automate the processes at its quarries and make Ignition an organization-wide standard.

Water Infrastructure Company Replaces Point-To-Point VPN With MQTT

Goodnight Midstream chose Ignition because it could fulfill several requirements: data mining and business intelligence work on the system backend; powerful Linux-based edge deployments...

The Purdue Model And Ignition

In the automation world, the Purdue Model (also known as the Purdue reference model, Purdue network model, ISA 95, or the Automation Pyramid) is a well-known architectural framework...

Creating A Digital Transformation Roadmap Using A Unified Namespace

Digital Transformation has become one of the most popular buzzwords in the automation industry, often used to describe any digital improvements to industrial technology. But what...