Have you seen a hummingbird? It’s a tiny ball of colourful feathers and muscle, beating its wings up to 80 times per second as it sucks nectar out of flowers with its long beak. Though this cute little bird does not remind you of a helicopter or a military drone, it has inspired many of these hovercrafts. And that is because it can ‘hover’ or stay static in air better than even the most advanced military crafts.
Who conceived the idea of a helicopter for the first time?
Nature and evolution are the best teachers. We learn by watching. Very little is known about when the idea of flying vertically and ‘standing in air’ first occurred to man. But we have two examples form history:
Two creatures, the hummingbird and the dragonfly, have inspired toy and machine makers through the ages by their ability to move smoothly in tiny spaces, stay still in mid-air and power up flight with complex wing movements. In fact, some helicopter and drone manufacturers even named their machines after them.
An example of this inspiration is Aero Vironment’s Nano Hummingbird Drone developed as a prototype for the US Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency. The Nano Hummingbird is a drone device that mimics the flight of hummingbirds to gain an agile, manoeuvrable edge.