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A group of engineers from University of Toronto (yeah baby!), is trying to make an aircraft with flapping wings. It never taken off yet, but they think it might work this summer.

It looks very inefficient, I certainly don

All I can say is that I wish them luck. I've seen rubber-powered indoor model ornithopters. They fly amazingly well but lifting a man is a completely different prospect. I can't find any details of the engine. Quite frankly I'll be surprised if it works.

Good luck to them, they face many obsticals, the biggest of them being the fact that they have to find a powerplant that is powerfull and light enough to power an ornithopter.

Neat! I've always thought about different ways that an ornithopter could work - and actually fly.

Now, I know they probably have a limited budget, but I figure if you made the wings structurally identical to a bird's wing, with all the required pivot points - with computer assistance in design terms it might work - by the looks of their version the wings just go up-down-up-down, instead of the weird angular and diagonal motions of a bird.

Though it may still be years ahead to create a gigantic, anitomically similar mechanical eagle.

A group of engineers from University of Toronto (yeah baby!), is trying to make an aircraft with flapping wings.

Why?

Yes, they

Why do it...some people are curious I guess.

"If you need to ask, you won't understand." - George Leigh Mallory, 1922

They do it because it's there, the same reason people like Mallory climb mountains. Men have wanted to imitate the birds since the beginning of history. It's also possible there's a financial incentive & being the first to achieve it wouldn't hurt the team members or the university. Fame & fortune are the motives behind most things these days.

This has been tried before without success. I'm sorry but if the design shown on the website is anything to go by I can't see this one being any different.

According to this it's already been done. There's no mention of it on the University of Toronto website.

http://www.ornithopter.org/flappingwings/toporov.htm

Ornithopter Research

The following information is a partial translation of Vladimir Toporov's web site http://www.umvk.narod.ru/index.html. We apologize for the poor quality of the translation. The work described here, which includes the first successful flight of a manned ornithopter, is too significant to go unnoticed due the language and other barriers to these accomplishments being recognized in the West.

I didn