A project for incorporating dead birds into flapping-wing drones might enable new ways of stealthily snooping on wildlife 鈥� and possibly spying on people for military purposes.
鈥淚nstead of using artificial materials for building drones, we can use the dead birds and re-engineer them as a drone,鈥� says at New Mexico Tech.
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Hassanalian and his colleagues have combined taxidermy bird parts with artificial flapping drone mechanisms to mimic the general appearance and motions of living birds more closely. They have done flight tests with two look-alike bird drones 鈥� one combining artificial bird body parts with a real pheasant head and feathers, and the other having real pigeon wings attached to an artificial bird body.
Such testing has also included attaching taxidermy wings from crows and hummingbirds to an ordinary mechanical-looking drone.
The researchers are using computer software to simulate the flapping wing motions and to figure out ways to continually improve the mechanical control of the wings after each flight test. They presented their work on 26 January at the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics in Maryland.
鈥淭his removes the need to design and manufacture a wing, [which] is notably difficult as wings are challenging to model and correctly size,鈥� says at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, who was not involved in the study. 鈥淭he remarkable resemblance of the robot to a real bird could be a large advantage when flying amongst birds.鈥�
The bird-like drones can glide with wings motionless, flap quickly to hover in place and soar if they catch thermal columns of rising hot air. But they lack the flexibility to perform a broader range of avian motions such as folding their wings to dive quickly.
鈥淲e can certainly place the entire taxidermy wing on some sort of 鈥榝lapparatus鈥� and move it as a whole, but in a living bird there are also various smaller muscles and ligaments to adjust its shape or fold it up,鈥� says at Czech company Flapper Drones. 鈥淭his is something that will be harder to recreate.鈥�
Using taxidermy birds as drones also raises some ethical questions 鈥� or at least human squeamishness over using dead birds in this way. The researchers have been working with a local taxidermist and purchasing taxidermy bird parts online, but Hassanalian acknowledged the need to look into research policies for dealing with dead birds before getting more ambitious.
Such bird drones could eventually help study how some living birds may conserve energy by flying in a 鈥淰鈥� formation, says Hassanalian. The drones could also enable the study of how feather colour patterns change heat absorption and airflow patterns to save energy in flight.
The bird drones鈥� flapping wings would also be much quieter than a typical quadcopter drone with propellers, as long as the motors inside the drone body are sound-proofed. That could prove useful for both sneakily studying birds and for acting as 鈥渟py drones for military use鈥�, according to the research paper.
鈥淪ometimes you don鈥檛 want people to find out that this is a drone,鈥� says Hassanalian.
