The Drone, Reinvented.
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- Опубликовано: 10 фев 2025
- The FAA insisted I stop…
*Product Links*
Meta Bird 👉 amzn.to/4eMI59n
DJI Mini 👉 amzn.to/3Z5IZYR
Can this bird-shaped drone replace traditional drones? Today, I’m testing the Meta Bird-a quirky, ornithopter-style concept drone that claims to mimic real bird flight. With bold promises of redefining flight, we’re diving in to see if it soars above expectations or crash-lands in practicality.
In this video, I’ll unbox, set up, and put the Meta Bird to the test. From its feather-light foam design and flapping-wing mechanics to real-world piloting challenges, I’ll share how it compares to modern drone tech like DJI Mini. Along the way, I explore its potential and consider how emerging drone designs could shape the future of disaster relief, search and rescue, and humanitarian tech.
📲 Meta Bird Specs:
Material: Carbon fiber & liquid crystal polymer wings; indestructible foam body
Weight: Ultra-light 1.6g LiPo battery (58 mAh), quick 12-minute charge
Range: 100m Bluetooth 4.0 connection
Top Speed: 12 mph
🌟 Key Features:
Mimics bird flight with flapping wings (ornithopter design)
Glides like a swallow when not flapping
Simple controls through The Flying App (iOS and Android)
📦 Why Test the Meta Bird?
As someone who loves reviewing innovative, offbeat tech, the Meta Bird checks all the boxes: affordable ($99), indie-engineered, and packed with potential for tinkerers. While it’s no DJI, it could hint at a more accessible future for drones, powered by open-source platforms like Raspberry Pi.
🚁 Real-World Context:
Living in Florida-aka hurricane alley-I’ve seen firsthand how drones revolutionize disaster response. From search and rescue to reconnecting communities in blackout zones, drone tech is saving lives. Could experimental designs like the Meta Bird play a role in the future of humanitarian efforts?
📹 What You’ll See:
Hands-on flying experience with Meta Bird
Unboxing & setup
Spec breakdown vs. DJI Mini
Piloting challenges and tips
Reflections on disaster relief and drone evolution
🔗 Links & Resources:
Meta Bird Official Website
DroneResponders
Thai Cave Rescue Insights
#drone #dji #uav
Do yourself a favor and skip to 14:00 - you're welcome.
Do yourself a favor and give a thumbs down and boot this clown back to his desk at State Farm.😂
Take my money
Talking about absolutely anything but the drone.
Thanks bro. I just had a listen at 1.25 speed and that sounds way more normal than at Normal speed. Seems like it was slowed down on purpose to make the video longer.....
i wasted all time and at the end came here to comment about last minute... just found your comment
RC version of a wind up toy I had in 1979. Pretty awesome.
Yeah I had the same one... BUT didnt pay $99 for it :D
Yep
Hopefully no rubber band to break again, and again, and.....
had the same toy same year.. got it at the air and space museum. flew it in on the spot inside and it flew into the back of an elderly lady's bee hive hair dew.. she was terrified, came unglued.. with each flap it go more tangled, and it wouldn't quit flapping...
I had one too! My parents bought it from a street vendor in Paris, France. It was fun! But not super durable...
Taking the high pitch out of drone blades is a worthy goal.
I think saying that imitating nature is just better is a fallacy. Living organisms are complex because they need to do a lot of things, machines are usually only needed to do a few things really well. Just as an example - a simple bicycle can make me more efficient at long distances than a wolf scouting for food. True - a wolf will feed himself, heal, breed, defend, etc., all the while my bicycle can basically only do one thing, but that's the one thing I need from it. Similarly, a quad can hover in one place, unlike any bird, and a fixed wing can be build to be so fast and efficient that we use them to fly from continent to continent in less than a day. That's not to say we can't learn from nature, we just want to keep in mind that the machines we create don't have to have the same limitations as living creatures.
Yup. Pretty sure bio-inspired drones are usually more complex and less efficient - compare this drone with a normal fixed-wing plane, for example. This one only has an 8 min flight time according to the website (which probably means 5 or 6 mins in real life), and that's despite how optimised the whole construction is, using carbon fibre wings etc.
Ospreys hover. Hummingbirds hover. Lots of birds can hover. You need to get out more.
Saying that imitating nature is the same as exactly copying it is a lame straw argument. No one is saying that we need to develop a muscle powered A340. But one day, when we genetically engineer Rodan...
Is there a drone the size of a Canada goose that can fly over a thousand miles in a day? (I genuinely don't know.)
@@thomassuit7450 No, no-one is saying that a "muscle powered A340" is a good idea, but saying that this bird drone is more efficient than a standard propeller-based fixed-wing drone, is almost exactly like saying that A340's would be more efficient if we removed the jet engines and made them flap their wings.
As for your Canada goose question, I've seen some pretty long endurance drones (400+ miles) but not sure if there's ones that'll do 1000+ miles. Also, you're comparing drones' everyday capabilities with birds' migratory behaviours. The geese drop something like 30% in bodyweight during this trip. So it takes them months to recover. They certainly wouldn't be able to do 1000+ miles per day every day. A better comparison would be what canadian geese cover in a normal day (which is probably a lot lower than current drones' capability).
Currently our problem isn't really efficiency though - electric motors are super efficient already. Our problem is energy storage. Batteries really don't store much energy for their weight (i.e. they have poor energy density). And while petrol is a lot better (and most long-endurance drones do use petrol engines), petrol engines are not as efficient as electric motors (and rather heavier) so we don't get quite as much gain from petrol's energy density as we would've had.
@Vousie I didn't say they have to be able to do it every day. Just can they do it. A drone with a warhead only flies once, so it's not an unfair comparison.
Geese do it twice a year, every year, and it's not like they are grounded for days when they reach their destination. It just takes them a few months to get enough fat back for the return flight.
Rotary wing flight is inherently less efficient than fixed wing flight. Where this matters is when the desired drone size gets small enough (e.g. covert surveillance applications), flapping wings become a better solution as they provide both thrust and efficient glide. There are already ornithopter type drones much smaller than the Meta.
@@thomassuit7450 There are currently drones in commercial production that you can fly for 6 hours, land, refuel & swap batteries, then take off and fly again.
And they do need to be able to do it every day, because that's what most commercial uses need. Not all drones are for killing people.
And I am not talking about multirotors or helicopters. I mean fixed-wing drones (i.e. planes). Quadplanes are especially good, because they get the vertical takeoff & landing advantage of multirotors while having endurance pretty close to standard fixed wing.
It's also not a fair comparison to compare multirotors with flapping wings because multirotors can hover, flapping wings can't, except for hummingbirds and similar designs, but those tend to be less efficient than multirotors. Have a look at just how much sugar real hummingbirds have to eat daily just to live, and they can literally starve to death in a matter of hours. They often have to go into "torpor" which is essentially hybernation just to survive the night. This is not something we want to copy...
14:08 finally flies the thing
This drone needs to be taken to the next level. Give it more power along with a wider wingspan for more gliding potential, also add an FPV capability so that the operator can vicariously "fly like an eagle."
pretty cool that ornithopter drones exist and have valid pros over drones, cheers for showing us
They may in principle have benefits over other drones. I am sure one exists, but it is not Metabird.
@Willy_Tepes The first car wasn't a Bugatti Veyron. The first airplane wasn't a V-22 Osprey. The first ship wasn't a Panamax class container ship.
Metabird isn't the end goal. No, ornithopters will never be good at cargo, or hovering in one exact spot for an hour.
You guys keep dismissing the one role where they are ideal - spying.
Crows will attack you if you wave a black cloth. They think it is a injured crow.
I actually had two run ins with crows involving black plastic objects they wanted very badly.
Crows very smart make good friends if treated with love and respect.
🏴
as long as drones look like birds, both drones and real birds are going to be hunted in several scenarios like wars for example
A re-imagining of a rubber band powered toy I had from the 1970's :)
The wings and tail appear to be made from carbon fibber (fib: to lie), not genuine carbon fiber.
At 162 g per square meter for actual 2x2 twill carbon fiber cloth, plus another 100g/m2 of resin, the wings and tail would be far too heavy for the application. The molded thickness of the wing would be about .008”, or 3 sheets of paper thick, and would require much more resin to fill in the weave, in order to create a smooth, shiny surface, making it perhaps .012-.015” thick.
What they used is a 2D image of carbon fiber, laminated between thin plastic sheets, aka carbon fibber. Take a pair of calipers to the wing, and let us know how thick they are. My guess is .003", which is 1/3 thinner than 2x2 twill carbon fiber cloth.
This could probably be improved upon with some sort of linear motors printed on flexible PCB. Something like a force motor, unrolled, would probably be great for RC ailerons.
when I was a kid 70 years ago I had one of those little plastic birds that would fly
The TIM Bird probably... 😉
I will name this little drone hawk tuah. 🎉😊
maybe if it was reflective the other birds would not attack it. my grandfather would put pie pans in his garden to scare birds away.
That air to air refueling set up looks more like a dragonfly’s mating ritual 😂
12:50 It's not DGI drones. It's DJI. Cheers, D. (Liked and subscribed:)
"That would make MacGyver proud" - love it! :) Well done as always!
Birds aren't real.
That poor kid was calling it years ago but got called out as a lunatic because his idea was so accurate that the machine had to make him look like a nutcase so that it wouldn't catch on.. turns out he was just ahead of his time.
What birds?😊
Hey, that's what I was gonna say 😂
damit
My fellow Redditor, I like Kim Kardashian too! 😂😂😂
In a time when channels are complaining about not getting recommended, this video has been all over my RUclips recommendations. And, today I get an actual Notification recommending it. Fine. Fine. Okay. I'm watching.
That was a long buildup to seeing it fly. 13:10 is about where the flying actually starts.
Looks like a fun new toy. In addition to all the other facts you bring up, it would be nice to know the fundamentals, like how easy it was to control ("a learning curve" isn't that descriptive), how long the flight times are, and how fun it was to fly.
Also, if you don't want to get the drone stuck in a tree or enrage the local birds, don't fly under the trees where they nest. I don't test my new drones amongst trees for both those reasons.
Why does he keep saying DGI?
biggest drone company and most influential, basically the basis/ anchor of comparison.
@@periodicdragonflare5572 DJI
@@periodicdragonflare5572 Pretty much
@@periodicdragonflare5572 You're thinking of DJI
It's DJI 😂
2:02 You mean Dee Jay Eye, not Dee Gee Eye. 😊💙
Okay. Now that I've watched it I've got questions. Now, don't get me wrong. The production value was nice. And, I'd kind of like to see the upgrades so I'll subscribe. All that said, did you read all of the script yourself or was some of this a voice clone? And did you write the script? Or was it written by chat GPT? There were a few little tell tales that made me think a person would not have read that script without noticing the error. But maybe that was an editing thing. I'm just curious.
Fantastic, I want to have one!
But let's be honest, a drone that imitates birds, isn't going to be a big step in hurricanes to save lives but in wars to destroy them...
Yeah, this felt really forced, not to mention, the text he read out had all the cumbersome wordy trappings of something churned out by ChatGPT.
Um... Leonardo DaVinci proposed this thing hundreds of years ago. Facebook hasn't reinvented the drone, they've taken and ornithopter and rebranded it with a little bit of label-slapping.
Who is DGI?
Good question...
I bet he pronounces gif, like gif too. 😤
It's the cousin to DJI..
Add a ducted fan, good cameras, also increase the wing span - this thing is the perfect drone for your Mach 5. Speaking of drones and cars... Why don't modern super cars come with a drone that would fallow, and film, your car when you go for a track day, at your local race track. If someone is spending a million dollars for a car, it should at least come with some cool gadgets.
Great idea
Really? All this is possible, they keep it secret from you. I guess. Super car owners don't race 500,000 cars. To much TV. A race car is a different animal.
@@petepop4319 I think that car makers are into making cars and just don't think about what would enhance an owners driving enjoyment in the terms of gadgets. I have a few friends that track their expensive cars. Yes, it is not racing, but it is a great way to have fun and not go to jail. I bet they would enjoy some footage of their diving from a vantage point other than their significant other track side with a camera.
pretty sure AUDI has a built-in drone that charges and deploys directly from the vehicle... forget which model, but saw it in a video
Wondering what took so long, I thought of this when drones came out because I had one as a kid in Korea in the 70's but had more color.
I hope you see this. I have an idea about a drone build; you should create a drone that has wings facing on all outer sides. Something resembling an alien ship with only the shape of the vessel and the drone wings should be visible the drone should have these characteristics,
DRONE CHARACTERISTICS
PORTS FOR THE AIR TO EXIT
FULL MOVEMENT IN THE AIR WITHOUT CHANGING PHYSICAL POSITION
HOVING CAPABILITIES
they need to design robot bird feet so it can move around on land. this is more like 1/3rd of a bird.
Yeah, but maybe it would pay to model it on a pterosaur rather than a bird. They may have had a superior design in some ways.
Those crows on the grounds are grackles
When comparing sound you mention the meta at 75, but the DGI at 83. But the DGI went up to 101 on camera while the max on the meta hit on camera was 76. So, your testing seems suspect or at least incomplete.
It was literally on camera and not what you said.
just stating db is meaningless in itself... its just a ratio. and doesnt account for frequency or harmonic content...
I had metabird in the 1980s, but it was white.
an ornithopter is not a new concept ...
Furthermore, remote controlled ornithopter robots are not a new concept.
The simplest non-robot version of this is the rubber band powered, "Tim Bird toy classic" which has been around for decades & decades and basically looks like this one but with cheaper materials and zero ability to control flight (beyond the initial configuring of flight surfaces as I think one can adjust the tail). That toy is a small microcontroller, a Lipo battery, small brushless DC electric motor, & a couple actuators away from being the remote controlled ornithopter shown on this video.
For actual ornithopter robots, google "Self Flying eBird" for a toy that traces its design to the rubber band powered version as much as this one and dates back at least a decade (see ruclips.net/video/sxhPXuH7PQs/видео.html ). The difference is that that toy would seem to be a cheaper version of this.
Or if you want versions of this that are less toy like, look up "The Drone Bird Company" (they have a RUclips channel, by the way). They provide both flapping & fixed wing solutions (a transparent, low speed propeller at high enough altitude will be extremely stealthy) simulating birds. You could also google "Festo Smartbird".
Sure, but I've never seen a remote-controlled one for 100 bucks before. Festo's groundbreaking bird probably cost tens of thousands just to build.
@@no1DdC, they exist (as per my comment that you seem to be replying to which seems to have disappeared -perhaps because I linked to an example?) but this one seems nicer.
theory = marketing
I'm pretty sure if you put a FPV camera on there you wouldn't be able to see very well. It doesn't look like a very stable platform to put a camera. You would definitely need serious image stabilization.
Probably soft mounting, the camera would do nothing without digital image stabilization .
Just a cursory search will reveal that this "drone" has been released SEVERAL times under different names over the years. Several times. It's not a "prototype", it's not "new", it's not "revolutionary", etc... Spend another $100 and get the DJI Neo or a Tello.
Yep and these types of flying birds have been rejected for taking payloads time and time again. This dude clearly thinks that he is smarter than the average bear and has access to hidden knowledge. The amount of "I care and I'm better than you" nonsense he threw into a video about a 100 dollar toy was beyond unreasonable.
I have had several ornithopters. The bottom line is they are like a kite and tend to get lost when caught up in the lightest wind. And at 30' altitude and above, there is much more wind to carry your expensive robobird away to be lost forever... Don't ask me how I know, But I highly recommend a DJI Mini 4K. And I also have a NEO and a Avata 2...
I find it hard to believe there is any carbon fibre or liquid crystal in the wings, you have almost certainly been scammed by some printed patterns.
Very cool,,I had one 30 years ago that had a rubber band in it. You said dgi and I know you meant dji. Thank you for your channel.😊
Just add a small IR camera to get bird eye's view. It'll be useful in search and rescue missions.
It should be called meta bat
0:45 what's the FFA?
Future farmers of America
Miami blackbirds 🐦⬛ are notoriously protective of their territory, if they realize you are related to Zucky you’ll be next
Been to Jersey lately. I'm shure the public would love to see how it all works
Could you imagine this with upgraded tech and with some c4 on it, would be crazy on the battle field....
LCP liquid crystal polymer, hmm an observation would compare such material with carbon fibre simulated vinyl wrap commonly used on cars etc. Or it could be the high tech neo material LCP of course if such specific polymer exists....
Who the hell is DGI ?
DGI is the brand of drone he has that he is comparing the Metabird drone to. The one he weighed with 4 propellers. It's louder, heavier, more expensive and more capable.
@@comfortablynumb9342 I think you missed the sarcasm in the previous post. DGI does not exist. He's trying to say DJI. A lot of people make this same mistake and don't even realize they are saying it incorrectly.
At 4:48 DJI mini pro quad copter
He seems to own one but doesn’t even now.😬
D*J'i
the decibel scale is logarithmic, not linear, which means every step up is exponential, so 83db is actually significantly louder than 75db, almost ten times louder.
@DataSlayerMedia Self Correction: It actually isn't much louder, dB is logarithmic because the human ear is too, so it shouldn't sound 10x louder, only have 10x as much energy.
yeah, i still don't understand how decibel scale works. why is 0 db not perfectly silent? i genuinely confuse
please tell me it can carry a FPV camera?
Your voice is very soothing and I fell asleep after about minutes in
Wow, copying a bird !
If u could attach a DJI digital fpv system to it and some how figure out how to transfer the controls over that would be amazing. It can be done but it would be very hard ge5ing it compact and light enough for this platform. That being said many of the things you mentioned are addressed with fixed wing drones. This type of drone is hard to control and hence why fixed wings would make for better options also fixed wing likely is more efficient power wise too.
I had an ornithopter as a kid, was made of mylar.
The crow picks it because it is shinny, not because it thinks it's a bird!
The Bennu RC Flying Bird has been out for years and easily outperforms this
Def curious to see the image stabilization needed to fly fpv on this.
Now that's blending in with your environment
By the shape in the thumbnail I was thinking will it be a proof that they had drones in ancient Persia or Meazpotamia...
"ornithorpter" - google that word to see how effective those are historically.
I fear it's too light even for that tiny camera. It will throw the cg off and eat up battery real fast.
If it was 2x larger... yes.
LoRa bird with 1080p camera is crazy
oh ...be serious, I am also very enthusiastic about drones since its born and operated tons of almost all types of them along 20 years since I started with...but believe me, this is a joke toy comparing with even less endowed amateur drones today!
The issue is concerning the structure design providing flight mechanics to be really controlled including automatically
I am talking about stabilizing drone against winds, gusts or against extra loads inertia.
Even native birds can not easily or never support simple extra-loads that today even ordinary commercial public drones for amateurs hobby are capable of by new integrated built-in flight processors they have!
This, is in no way surprising or impressive at all.
You didn’t show any video from the Metabird. Does it even have a camera?
The metabird was cool but all the drone use case stuff felt like it should have been a different video.
Have you seen crows attacking other birds? It’s called mobbing. Some birds do it when they get territorial
Won't replace the other drones because how are you going to stabilize the footage on that bird?
I love it still like the quadcopter
Very interesting. I do have some crow problems.
Not a crow…anyway. Blackbird thought he was moving up in the world being called a crow
It's an ornithopter. They've existed for decades.
Please tell me about the Meta Bird and not hurricanes and quick response could have cut the video in half and told me more about it. But thank you for the time and money you took to discuss the Meta Bird.
No flight until 13:13
The feds already have smaller bird/insect style drones used by the military and CIA. The technology exists and is in use in antiterrorism operations and other intelligence gathering operations.
I saw some tiny helicopter type drones that carry a charge. They were supposed to be for the Marines and they could be used again or they could be blown up next to a target. I don't know if they ever really used those or if they're using the little chopper grenades now. But I remember seeing them on TV.
dragonflies are not real.
@@comfortablynumb9342 You are probably thinking of this small drone from Norway, which has been adopted by a number of armed forces: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teledyne_FLIR_Black_Hornet_Nano
The MetaBird by Bionicbird has no relation to Facebook's Meta. MetaBird is a smartphone-controlled flying bird drone created by the company Bionicbird.
Drone, the most misused word in our hobby. Everything we fly is a drone! Fixed wing included. Drone just means no pilot. Think of the US Airforce Predator drone!
How they gonna call is the "Meta" Bird and call the model "Zucky"
nothing will replace non.. the orthinopter (that bird) is even older than the drone!
i love this.keep advancing it :)
I wonder why this video is not a an hour long.
@ 0:47, the Future Farmers of America want to surveil you? Crazy!
I would like to see an update video that reads "Birds Eye View - Flight" 😀
It flies like a bat not a bird
FFA ! I don't think the Future Farmers of America would want to surveil you.
I have two different models of these and they're quite difficult to control. It's a good toy for a day or two though.
lol strap stuff to fpv drones. you can customize all the parts and replacing them is cheaper. just got to study a bit of betaflight and maybe get a dron sim that your radio is compatible with and get a good dune going for your pid's and just start practicing. when you can fly it, you can turn on acro mode to do some better maneuvers. its easy to have like 4k cams in them and you can get beefy motors and some decent blades for them, you will be able to carry a lot. there's also beast class drones. you may like those. thows could probably hull a payload lol.
i wonder how big now would need to be to hull a person
I thought these days all birds like this. ;)
But can it sing at 4am to annoy the shit out of you?
You talked me out of even buying the damn brid.
This is basically a more expensive copy of the old airhogs firewing from 2014😅
Avitron Bird V2 is the same but has it's own radio. Its useless in wind. So no it wont replace your drone.
Zero action till 13:00
you shouldnt have brought up the cave incident in this vid, it doesnt showcase anything relevant and just makes you look silly trying to compare a flooded cave rescue to other technical feats. the kids were rescued and doesnt prove the point you wanted it to. as hard as it is to get to the moon thats far less challenging than trying to traverse a flooded cave thats filling up more as time passes and ultimately they were rescued with EXISTING tech
Ornithopter, not drone. Starling, not crow.
I don't see how this would be useful for delivering supplies. It's too light, & couldn't carry anything. For search & rescue or surveillance, maybe if you put a camera on it. Especially the last. That form wouldn't be needed for s&r, but might be good for surveillance, because it would blend in. As long as there's no crows nearby.
Watching a video about Drones or droning on and on?
Vocal Fry. No Thanks! 🙉
Jeez, do we get to see this thing fly?😅