03.01.11

Laughable innovations: Hummingbird robot

Posted in Crazy Weapons at 10:44 am by George Smith

One salient feature of the US press is the continued fascination with robots that aren’t quite as wonderful as described. The stories and people in them try to convey the impression that innovation and revolution in American technology are everywhere.

The world is always radically changed by the allegedly eye-popping robots and drones produced for the military.

For everyone else, though, it still pretty much sucks.

The economy may be stagnant, the AfPak war conducted forever with the enemy unimpressed and unmoved by US technological might, record numbers of people may be on food stamps. It’s a sci-fi dystopia from the world of paperback novels. But there are always some sucking off taxpayer dough through DARPA, the same agency that tried to bring us the jumping minefield.

Today’s funny is the Aerovironment hummingbird drone. Produced in Monrovia, not too far from DD, they certainly do know what real hummingbirds look like. And their robot is no f—— hummingbird, no matter how they paint it or make it look.

It could just as well have been made to look like a cardboard core from a roll of toilet paper.

Here’s another lousy video of the “hummingbird.” It only looks like a hummingbird in flight if you’ve never spent a couple hours watching a few. “It looks like a magic trick,” comments one of Aerovironment’s employees.

Apt.

Hummingbirds are everywhere in Pasadena. If you have a yard or hanging feeders, they’re there in force.

They don’t whir. And they are blindingly fast. Not at all like the bit of mechanical jerry-bilt rubbish in the videos.

If you hear a hummingbird, it’s the tiny whoosh and thrum of its wings as it zips by your head. Or the high-pitched tweeting it makes when it’s fighting with colleagues or warning you to stay clear of the feeder. Everyone with hummingbirds in the year sees the silent mid-air dead stops from a full sprint. Or the young cat who hasn’t yet seen too many flailing in mid-leap as the bird stops just out of reach, mocks the mammal with a twitter, and then sprints off at an extreme angle to hit the sugar water anyway.

They don’t do rickety buzz like the Aerovironment toy, like a bad little fan that could run out of juice anytime.

And hummingbirds have endurance. They go all day and don’t look like they’re going to crash if some minder with a joystick isn’t there to see they don’t blutz into the business’s wall.

“It’s the equivalent to the advent of the printing press, the computer, gun powder,” said one of the common cheerleaders, Peter Singer, for the news item. “It’s that scale of change.”

“The success of the hummingbird drone, however, ‘paves the way for a new generation of aircraft with the agility and appearance of small birds,'” said someone prone to a bit of exaggeration at DARPA.

It is also said insects will be changed into robot warriors.

“Lockheed Martin has developed a fake maple leaf seed, or so-called whirly bird, loaded with navigation equipment and imaging sensors,” it reads.

At least the bomb-sniffing bees and Box ‘o Radar don’t make appearances. They didn’t work out.

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