Meeting Abstract
Birds control their flight by changing the orientation (pose) and shape of their wings and tail. There is a large combination of parameters that can be altered, and the way in which these are coordinated to achieve specific flight trajectories is not well understood. To gain insight into these control strategies, we reconstructed time-resolved point-cloud sequences of falconry birds making fine changes to their flight surfaces as they glided down a straight corridor. The point clouds were derived from disparity maps between high-speed cameras positioned above and below the flight test region. We report on changes to the pose and shape of the birds, and assess whether coordinated wing-tail movements exhibit consistency and covariance.
