Flying Robots Made From Cellophane? 148
Roland Piquepaille writes "Researchers have discovered that ordinary cellulose is a piezoelectric and smart material that can flap when exposed to an electric field. ScienceNOW reports that electricity can give life to cellophane. When you put a very thin layer of gold on each side of cellophane, and that you apply electric current to the gold layers, one positive, one negative, the cellophane curved toward the positive side. If you switch the voltage fast enough, the cellophane starts to act as a wing. So it should be possible to use it to build lightweight flying robots carrying cameras, microphones or sensors for surveillance missions. Read more for additional references and pictures about this electroactive paper (EAPap)."
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Speakers? (Score:5, Interesting)
Wingspans.. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Dune (Score:1, Interesting)
http://www.ornithopter.org/ [ornithopter.org]
Watch out for suicide fly bombers! (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Wingspans.. (Score:5, Interesting)
Thats correct, though people may develop lightweight payloads as well. Here in Melbourne a bunch of peoople used to (and perhaps still do) fly model airplanes in the domed reading room of the state library. This is a really big room with still air. The planes are made of small amounts of balsa and a sheet made by dripping a plastic compound onto the surface of bath of water. They were powered by a rubber band.
One of these planes would fly slowly to the roof over about five minutes and glide slowly to the floor. They flew at (I suppose 10 or 20 cm/s). One day I witnessed a disaster when the airconditioning got turned on by accident and the entire fleet got caught in a scale hurricane.