Flying like a Jelly Fish

Don't go crazy when you see the title, What I am about to say is a innovation by Lief Ristroph and Stephen Childress of New York University. You might have compare an aero plane to a bird and an helicopter to dragon fly in some day of your life. Both of these are animals who can fly, but did you ever thought that the researchers would be able to engineer a miniature flying machine using the swimming motion of a jellyfish?

As I have also said earlier most flying machines we have seen in our days mimic animals birds or insects, they tend to flip upside down unless they have special mechanisms called aerodynamic dampeners which are basically tails or sails; or a continues control system to control the wing speed and the motion. But this flying machines mechanism which mimics the jellyfish swim allowed it to maintain stability without adding those mechanisms.

This jellyfish flying machine is called a "Thopter" which weighs about 2.1 grams including the motor which weighs 1.1 grams still in experimental stage. Researchers would be one day able to get this flyer to a commercial stage.

For the ones who need to see how the jellyfish swim:

Resources:
LiveScienceVideos : YouTube channel
Facts from Royal Society Publishing