A robot equipped with real pigeon feathers flies like a living bird

A robot that resembles a pigeon and can make tight turns like real birds may point to the future of aerospace engineering – a continuously morphing wing.

Understanding exactly how birds fly has always been tricky, because individual wings are made up of multiple feathers. These feathers are always interacting with each other, allowing the bird’s wings to morph continuously mid-flight.

To learn more, David Lentink at Stanford University in California and his colleagues first looked at the wing of a pigeon cadaver. Each wing had 40 feathers, 20 on the upper side, and 20 on the lower.

Read more: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2230401-a-robot-equipped-with-real-pigeon-feathers-flies-like-a-living-bird/#ixzz6BIewAInh