alt Hacker NewsInstead of a full flapping wing thopter I wonder if something prop driven but with moving wings (for show, not propulsion) would be good enough for distant recon. Basically it would look like an RC plane with transparent plastic wings for lift and painted porous flapping wings underneath.
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ben-gy • yesterday at 8:28 PM
It’s possible, but it would look unnatural to the human eye - you could introduce variable motor speeds to try and mimic bird behaviour when flying in different directions and approaches but from my rabbit holing on the topic I’ve found effort required to get something similar but still not perfect would likely outweigh the effort required to just build it properly.
A lot of radar drone detection is looking for the Doppler signature of the prop. You'd need to use a shrouded edf but then flight times fall off a cliff