A project for incorporating dead birds into flapping-wing drones might enable new ways of stealthily snooping on wildlife – and possibly spying on people for military purposes.
“Instead of using artificial materials for building drones, we can use the dead birds and re-engineer them as a drone,”
says Mostafa Hassanalian at New Mexico Tech.
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-a-like bird drones – one combining artificial bird body parts with a real pheasant …
The team, who presented their work in late January at the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics’ SciTech Forum, designed new systems reliant on taxidermy bird parts and artificial wing setups to mirror their (formerly living) avian inspirations.
Hassanalian’s group technically built two dead bird bots—one fusing artificial body parts with an actual pheasant’s head and feathers, as well as a mechanical body combined with real pigeon wings.
Their paper looks into the use of taxidermy birds on flapping wing drones so that wildlife monitoring will be more seamless and natural.
By using 3D flapping and aerodynamic simulators, limits of aerodynamic flapping characteristics could be set for the drone for a specific set of wings. This allowed the implementation of flapping mechanisms and testing of the aerodynamics of the flapping wing drone.
It is discovered that although it is difficult to create such a drone, it is very practical for research purposes and can keep nature undisturbed. Improvements on the flapping wing drone would be to make the overall drone look more natural. Spur gears can be changed to helical gears so there is reduced noise and an increase in longevity.
Bendable wrists would help in making the wings more flexible in flight. Adding different flight options to the drone could yield an easier user experience and aid in a more natural flight.
A final improvement would be to add legs so that the drone can perch and monitor without using much battery.
Sources: New Scientist; American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics