I saw this video yesterday of a bird-like robot landing on a target perch through a combination of gliding and shaping its wings asymmetrically in a few different ways. The result is a micro-aerial vehicle that can make a delicate landing on a person’s hand.

I’m trying to get a good look at the wings themselves to see what material those are. Their paper, “Dynamics and Performance of a Tailless MAV with Flexible Articulated Wings,”¹ has a lot to say about choosing a material for the wings based on its relative rigidity. My quick scan makes me think ABS would do well in the range they lay out, given its elasticity.

The point is I want to make this bird on a MakerBot. And even though Daniel Terdiman writes at CNET that there are military applications for this project, I was a child in the 90′s and I just want my own Zazu. This isn’t trivial. I had a bird once, and I’m pretty sure it…well, let’s just say he “set himself free” in the saddest possible way. I imagine pet robot bird would stick around a little longer, and there would be no need to keep him in a cage.

1. A. A. Paranjape, S.-J. Chung, H. H. Hilton, and A. Chakravarthy, “Dynamics and Performance of a Tailless MAV with Flexible Articulated Wings,” AIAA Journal, vol. 50, no. 5, May 2012, pp. 1177-1188. [↩]