AirPenguins - Autonomous Flying Objects

Since common roads will probably become a thing of the past in a predictable future – yeah, that's quite a shocker, we know – people should start thinking of using air more often as a stage for revolutionary means of transportation. And that's probably what the guys at Festo had in mind when developing their AirPenguin project.

The engineers at Festo, an industrial control and automation company based in Esslingen, Germany, have developed artificial penguins that can actually fly. These autonomous objects are 3.7 meters (145 inches) long and are formed of a one cubic metre helium-filled balloon, linked with a pyramid-shaped flexible structure of four carbon fibre rods at each end via some rings, placed some 10cm apart, as specified in a brochure provided by the company.

“The rings together with the carbon fibre rods yield a 3D Fin Ray®structure that can be freely moved in any spatial direction. The Fin Ray structure was derived from the anatomy of a fish’s fin and extended here for the first time to applications in three-dimensional space,” further explains Festo.

Additionally, the AirPenguins have the ability to flap their wings, as these parts of the object are “controlled by two actuators: a flapping actuator for the up-and-down movement of the wings, and a further unit that displaces the wing strut to alter the pressure point of the wings.”

Also, these flying objects are equipped with complex navigation and communication facilities that enable them to either fly around autonomously, or move on a pre-set itinerary. Festo has developed three such AirPenguins and have monitored them while moving into the air, with the help of ultrasound “transmitting stations”.

The results showed that the three penguins exchanged information between them and the transmitting stations in order not to collide with each other and move as a group.

Of course, the experiment is much more complex than what we have mentioned here, but for those of you who want to know more about the AirPenguins, feel free to access the brochure - provided by Festo – below these article. As for the automotive importance of such a project, we feel that the technologies used for it may provide some manufacturers out there with a starting point for exploring “air solutions” for the future.