Flapping 'nano' aircraft takes flight in (AV)
Monday, August 24, 2009
Engineers at Aeronvironment (AV) of Monrovia, California, have demonstrated the world’s first successful flight of the smallest ever self-powered, rudderless, aircraft with flapping wings.
The nano air vehicle (NAV) is modeled after a large insect or small bird, such as a hummingbird. It can hover indoors under radio control and without wires. “It is capable of climbing and descending vertically, flying sideways left and right, as well as forward and backward,” says the company. (See the video at end of the post).
The NAV carries its own power supply and operates by using two flapping wings, which also function as the rudder, elevators, ailerons and engine. “It’s extremely complicated and technically challenging to come up with ways to control an aircraft with two flapping wings,” AV’s Matt Keennon recently told Discovery News. “But this is the closest anyone has come to a rudderless, flapping aircraft.”
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