Meeting Abstract
The mystery of understanding how birds fly also has significant benefits in a major area of micro air vehicle (MAV) and general unmanned aerial vehicle research: improving maneuverability and efficiency to allow for flying highly dynamic, longer missions. A bird’s ability to morph its wings enables highly dynamic and efficient flight. This results in greatly improved performance compared to fixed wing aircraft of comparable size and weight, which are optimized for limited sequences of flight. We developed a feathered bio-hybrid flying robot to better understand how birds use their feathers to control flight. Closely mimicking pigeon wings enables us to understand the possible maneuvers enabled through wing morphing, and how to perform them in a repeatable, controlled manner. We adapt well understood equations of motion from traditional fixed wing aircraft to simulate our morphing wing bio-hybrid robot. By building our understanding of the maneuvers possible with morphing wings, we will be able to use this information to fly difficult missions autonomously, for example through a set of defined waypoints or to track another flying object using morphing for primary flight control. Better understanding the dynamics of the bio-hybrid wing are also essential for the development of disturbance rejection, such as stabilizing in gusty turbulent conditions. All of these developments lead towards a fully autonomous bio-hybrid aerial robotic platform. Finally, the robot and mathematical models offer deeper insight into how birds may control their flight.
