Dec 6, 2015 | By Andre
For centuries, humans have directed their gaze at the natural world in an effort to make sense of it all; but also learn and manipulate it for completely different and unrealized reasons.
Leonardo da Vinci, for example, is best known as a visual artist and notably the mastermind behind the Mona Lisa, but he also delved deep into the possibility of human flight. In his Codex on the Flight of Birds, he exhausted himself by studying the flight of birds and how their mastery of aviation might one day assist us in leaving the earth for ourselves.
Modern day examples such as e-reader displays derived from butterfly wings to the invention of velcro are a few further examples of being inspired by the natural world.
Let me now introduce you to Megan Leftwich, an engineering professor at George Washington University. Observations from her everyday surroundings is something that drives her as well.
“I’m so inspired by the natural world because we live in it and we see it all the time. It’s really easy for me to see leaves blowing in the wind and then think ‘Huh, I wonder how much force that leaf can take before it gets ripped off?’ These questions, I can live them to some extent, and so I can always be seeing something new to explore.”
In her case, the sort-of eureka moment transpired while observing sea lions during a family visit to the Smithsonian National Zoo. She noticed that, unlike most top-tier aquatic swimmers, sea lions maneuvered gracefully through the water using their fore flippers instead of their back flipper, fin or tail.
Not only did these fast moving aquatic mammals get around differently, their method lead to a very high thrust, low-wake underwater motion that was also unique in the animal kingdom.
“By generating thrust with their foreflippers in a jetlike motion, they are using a different paradigm of swimming from really any other type of swimmer,” she has said, comparing their style to a human doing the breaststroke.
It is through these observations that Megan Leftwich and her team began researching the math behind what's taking place. At first they would find themselves early and often at the zoo, patiently taking high resolution and high-speed videos. And when I say patiently, I mean it. In just under two years of collecting data, the over 100 hours of footage yielded only 30 minutes in usable information.
Once the observational data collection was complete (which also included a high-resolution scan of a sea lions fore-flipper) the task of recreating the sea lions movements in a controlled lab environment was upon them.
They set forth to replicate the movements of the sea lion by creating a robotic fore-flipper that accurately mimicked what was observed in nature. To produce the mechanical flipper, 3D Printed prototypes and eventually a printed silicone cover was created.
In the end, it is yet to be determined what the results of the research will yield. Dr. Leftwich has said that “we hope in the future we could design vehicles that use those principles to efficiently move through the water. Instead of a propeller, we can have an underwater vehicle that has some variation of fore-flippers.”
Whether technology derived from these efforts will become common place in the near future or only in a few hundred years - like was the case with Leonardo Da Vinci’s efforts - is for now unclear. But the knowledge is now gained, and the use of cutting edge 3D scanning and printing technology had their part to play in the effort.
Posted in 3D Printing Application
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That is in violation of the Marine Mammal Protection Act. Prosecute them.
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