The nankeen kestrel (Falco cenchroids) performs aerial maneuvers that put many advanced aircraft to shame. These tiny falcons are among the most stable fliers in the world and have evolved to withstand Australia’s extremely gusty and often violent winds. These birds can precisely adjust movements in real time, even hovering in adverse conditions, something that is difficult to imitate in rigid plane designs.

While frustrating enough for aeronautical engineers, the problem is expected to get worse as climate change worsens atmospheric turbulence. This will almost certainly become an even bigger headache for a society increasingly reliant on small pilotless aerial vehicles (sUAVs) for mapping, agricultural assessments, rescue efforts, and even rapid package deliveries.

Today’s SUVs typically only employ a couple of wind mitigation solutions in their designs to balance cost, weight and maneuverability. However, much more is needed to help them continue flying in dangerous conditions. Knowing this, an international research team recently began building kestrel-inspired robots which they then subjected to harsh conditions inside powerful wind tunnel facilities. Their results, recently published in two studies in the Journal of the Royal Society InterfaceThey suggest new strategies to design more efficient, reliable and safe suAVs.

Basically, it’s time to figure out how to include as many kestrel techniques in flying robots as possible.

A robotic bird helps uncover the mysteries of turbulence in flight | RMIT University

“Birds do not rely on a single response to wind gusts,” Matt Penn, an engineer at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) and co-author of the study, explained in a statement. “They constantly adjust their wings and tails to stay balanced, while the natural flexibility of their feathers and joints helps absorb sudden changes in airflow.”

Wind tunnel testing primarily focused on determining how attributes such as wing span and tail span affected force production and stability. Among their discoveries, the Penn team confirmed that docking a kestrel’s wing and tail extensions increased lift performance while reducing unwanted modulations.

“By creating a robot replica, we were able to measure how specific movements contributed to stability in flight,” explained RMIT aerospace engineer and study co-author Mario Martínez Groves-Raines. “Many of these techniques have the potential to improve the maneuverability of small aircraft, which face similar challenges as kestrels.”

In the future, researchers hope to go beyond the purely physical by studying the kestrel’s ability to sense and interpret its environment. Advances in this field could further improve the navigation technology on board SUVs, in addition to structural adaptations.

“This research shows what is possible when engineers look for solutions in nature,” added RMIT engineer and study co-author Abdulghani Mohamed.

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