Ornithopter project
The first thing to be thought of in flight, and the last thing to still be done; is flapping winged flight. The first man-powered ornithopter was designed by Leonardo da Vinci, and while it didn’t fly, it showed ingenuity as it came close to optimizing the energy provided by the human engine. There have been many recent breakthroughs in "flapping wing" technology, particularly at the University of Toronto Institute for Aerospace Studies, under Prof. James DeLaurier. There are already several prototypes, mostly small-scale remote controlled ornithopters. DeLaurier plans to showcase his flying machine at the 2006 Turin Olympics in Italy. The flight will be the culmination of a decades-long drive for the aviation engineer, who began his career working on the Apollo project at NASA’s Ames Laboratory in Mountain View, Calif. Below: a model made from da Vinci’s sketches; two action shots of DeLaurier’s prototype.
