‘PigeonBot’ is the first robot that can bend its wings like a real bird [2/3] - Feather formation.png (1/1)

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https://www.sciencenews.org/article/...like-real-bird

Pigeons may be considered rats of the sky, but some scientists have found
greater value in these urban birds: the blueprint for a new generation of flying
machines.

Birds can modify the shape of their wings by fanning out their feathers or
shuffling them closer together. Those adjustments allow birds to cut through the
sky more nimbly than rigid drones. Now, using new insights into exactly how
pigeons’ joints control the spread of their wing feathers, researchers have
built a robotic pigeon, dubbed PigeonBot, whose feathered wings change shape
like the real deal.

This research paves the way for creating more agile aircraft, says Dario
Floreano, a roboticist at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne in
Switzerland not involved in the work.

With birdlike wings, airborne machines could make tighter turns in cluttered
spaces, such as around buildings or in forests, and could better navigate rough
air, Floreano says (SN: 1/24/15). The new robot, described January 16 in Science
Robotics, also offers a way to study the nuts and bolts of bird flight without
animal experiments.

Researchers bent and extended the wings of dead pigeons to investigate how the
birds control their wing shape. Those experiments revealed that the angles of
two wing joints, the wrist and the finger, most affect the alignment of a wing’s
flight feathers. The orientations of those long, stiff feathers, which support
the bird in flight, help determine the wing’s shape. Based on those findings,
the team built a robot with real pigeon feathers, whose faux wrists and fingers
can morph its wing shape as seen in the pigeon cadavers.


more at
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/...like-real-bird


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