Pteromys: interactive design and optimization of free-formed free-flight model airplanes

• Published in: ACM transactions on graphics 2014-07, Vol.33 (4), p.1-10
• Main Authors: Umetani, Nobuyuki, Koyama, Yuki, Schmidt, Ryan, Igarashi, Takeo
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Aerodynamics; Aircraft; Airplanes; Design engineering; Gliders; Interactive; Trajectories; Wings (aircraft)
• ISSN: 0730-0301; 1557-7368
• DOI: 10.1145/2601097.2601129

This paper introduces novel interactive techniques for designing original hand-launched free-flight glider airplanes which can actually fly. The aerodynamic properties of a glider aircraft depend on their shape, imposing significant design constraints. We present a compact and efficient representation of glider aerodynamics that can be fit to real-world conditions using a data-driven method. To do so, we acquire a sample set of glider flight trajectories using a video camera and the system learns a nonlinear relationship between forces on the wing and wing shape. Our acquisition system is much simpler to construct than a wind tunnel, but using it we can efficiently discover a wing model for simple gliding aircraft. Our resulting model can handle general free-form wing shapes and yet agrees sufficiently well with the acquired airplane flight trajectories. Based on this compact aerodynamics model, we present a design tool in which the wing configuration created by a user is interactively optimized to maximize flight-ability. To demonstrate the effectiveness of our tool for glider design by novice users, we compare it with a traditional design workflow.