CHANNELS

Aerospace

Automotive

Automated & Autonomous Vehicles

Battery & Electrification Technology

Defense

Drone TV

Electronics

Manufacturing & Prototyping

Materials

Medical

Motion Control

RF & Microwave Technology

Robotics & Automation

Sensors & IoT

Test & Measurement

Aerospace
Automotive
Automated & Autonomous Vehicles
Battery & Electrification Technology
Defense
Drone TV
Electronics
Manufacturing & Prototyping
Materials
Medical
Motion Control
RF & Microwave Technology
Robotics & Automation
Sensors & IoT
Test & Measurement
Aerospace & Defense
Search Results

Novel Wind Tunnel for Birds Paves the Way for Better Drones

Pigeons can currently outclass any aerial robot's flight. Stanford University engineering professor David Lentink plans to use a new wind tunnel to learn the magic of bird flight and apply it to building better aerial robots. Nearly two meters long, the six-sided windowed observation section of the tunnel provides Lentink and his students a variety of ways to study bird flight. They currently zero in on specific aspects of birds' wing beats, using high speed cameras as well as motion capture techniques more commonly utilized in Hollywood films, recording wing motion millisecond by millisecond. They then translate these measurements to precise calculations of the force dynamics experienced along the birds' wings and in the surrounding air. Lentink envisions using the tunnel as a test-bed for new aerial robot designs. In addition to establishing better maneuverability controls for common quadcopter designs, he's particularly interested in building bird-like, winged robots that quickly morph their wing shape in order to maintain stability in turbulent air flows.

Topics:
Automation Imaging Measuring Instruments Motion Control Robotics Test & Measurement

More From SAE Media Group

    Transcript

    00:00:00 Birds are masters of maneuverability in ways that we are only beginning to understand. Birds can dramatically change the shape of their wings almost instantly and respond in that way very quickly to flying in turbulence, avoiding obstacles, and also flying very effectively over long distances. Here we are in front of a brand new bird wind tunnel. It's a wind tunnel in which we can

    00:00:33 study how birds fly up close so that we can learn the magic of flight and translate it into better flying robots. What's great about it is that we can vary the speed of the wind very precisely, from very close to 0 meters per second, all the way through to about 50 meters per second, which is very fast. The tunnel is designed to be super low turbulence, but we also want to study how birds fly in turbulence and how we design vehicles that are more stable in turbulence.

    00:01:03 So we also have this turbulence generation system. We can actually not only control how strong the turbulence is, but where the turbulence is in the tunnel. Bird are flying at 10 minutes per second, but in our lab, they're basically not moving. Because it's still in the same little test section, we could use a lot of our other lab equipment, like our high speed cameras and our motion tracking devices to measure all the kinematics

    00:01:28 and forces that it's generating without needing to use up a large expanse of space that would be necessary without the wind tunnel. I've been working with both lovebirds and parrotlets. The technique we use is all positive reinforcement for voluntary flights. That way, we're getting calm, natural flights as they would be in their natural environment. Studen

    00:01:56 Students are super excited to figure out what is it that enables birds to fly under these complex conditions and how can we translate what we find into developing robots that can be used for delivery, search and rescue, any application in an urban environment where conditions like winds are really unpredictable? For more, please visit us at stanford.edu.