Migratory birds will help create autonomous navigation systems for drones

Researchers from the Zoological Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences (St. Petersburg) and St. Petersburg State University studied the current work on navigation in birds and determined that their abilities are much more complex than previously thought, and they include a system of natural landmarks.

Predatory Calories: how the menu of Moscow peregrine falcons will help their reproduction

Why is it important to increase the population of rare birds in a megacity

Biologists studied marsh warblers (Acrocephalus palustris) and gray flycatchers (Muscicapa striata). These species were chosen because they regularly cross the magnetic equator during migration from Europe to Africa. At the same time, the birds were unable to receive any other signals besides geomagnetic ones for orientation, for example, to see the location of stars or estimate the length of daylight.

It turned out that both species retained the same orientation direction to the equator, that is, to the south. In previous experiments on garden warblers (Sylvia borin), a different effect was observed: the warblers changed the direction of their flight and flew to the pole (north).

"Understanding these mechanisms not only expands our knowledge of nature, but also opens up new opportunities for creating bio-inspired technologies, for example, in robotics and autonomous movement systems," Nikita Chernetsov, project manager and head of the Ornithology laboratory at the Zoological Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, told Izvestia.

Navigation by electromagnetic fields will allow you to plot routes where there are problems with GPS. And also, perhaps, based on this mechanism, it will be possible to create portable autonomous location detection equipment for drones, experts said.

Read more in the exclusive Izvestia article:

What's indicated by the pen: birds will help create autonomous navigation systems for drones