Meeting Abstract
Feathers enable birds to morph their wings through continuous shapes, allowing them to carefully change their aerodynamic wing planforms to perform nimble maneuvers. We study how skeletal motion and inter-feather friction translates to feather motion in order to better understand the mechanisms for wing shape changes. Using a motion capture camera system, we track the trajectory of the primary and secondary feathers and wing bones in a pigeon, Columba livia. We measure the morphing motion of the full wing and the wing after removing the feather vanes. This allows us to see how the motion of individual feathers is defined by the other feathers and the bone structure. We compare motion with intact feathers to motion with the feather vanes removed to assess the effects of friction and direct feather interaction. From these data, we determine a kinematic spring-damper model for feather motion. These findings have implications for designing bio-inspired robots with morphing feather-like mechanisms which could enable agile bird-like maneuvers.
