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- Spread your wings: will drones be able to replicate the skill of birds
Spread your wings: will drones be able to replicate the skill of birds
Millions of years of evolution have made birds masters of flight. Now scientists are studying their movements to create more advanced devices. Engineers from the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology and the University of Bristol have created a robot that simulates the movements of a kestrel to understand how the bird remains stable in strong air currents. These developments may lead to the emergence of new drones capable of operating in the most difficult conditions. What secrets of bird flight can change the future of aviation — in the material of Izvestia.
How scientists discovered the secret of steady flight of birds
The ability of birds to hover in the air and maintain stability even in strong gusts of wind has long been one of the most difficult mysteries of aerodynamics. While small drones often lose control in turbulence, kestrels are able to hover almost motionless, instantly reacting to the slightest changes in air flow.
It was this phenomenon that researchers from the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology and the University of Bristol decided to study. To understand the mechanisms of such stable flight, they created a mechanical model of a kestrel that reproduces the basic movements of a bird.
During the study, the scientists used a motion capture system in a wind tunnel. This technology made it possible to trace in detail how the kestrel changes the position of its wings, tail and body under the influence of wind. The analysis showed that the secret of its stability lies not in individual sharp maneuvers, but in continuous micro-corrections. The bird constantly, almost imperceptibly, changes its body position, instantly adapting to even minor changes in the air flow.
This is how the natural mechanism is fundamentally different from the work of modern drones. Most drones respond to deviations that have already occurred using sensors and stabilization algorithms. The kestrel is proactive, it continuously adapts to changing conditions, preventing loss of stability even before it occurs.
How the discovery will change drones and everyday human life
Today, drones are used in agriculture, logistics, industry, energy, and rescue operations, but their capabilities are still limited by weather conditions. Even modern devices with sophisticated stabilization systems experience difficulties in high winds.
However, as Islam Salamov, chief designer of the BAS Engineering Development Center of GGNTU, notes, turbulence remains a problem not only for technology.
— Any unmanned aircraft has problems with severe turbulence. But it's not just drones that are affected — birds also have difficulties in such conditions. They can't always fly in strong air currents either. Therefore, turbulence is generally a problem for any aircraft," says the expert.
This idea is confirmed by scientific research. In Bridging the gap: a review of gust mitigation in birds and small uncrewed aerial vehicles (2026), scientists concluded that small UAVs are significantly more susceptible to wind gusts than birds of similar size. At the same time, nature uses several turbulence compensation mechanisms at once — flexible wings, a sensor system, passive stabilization and continuous motion correction, whereas modern drones are still able to reproduce only individual elements of this system.
The first developments already demonstrate the effectiveness of this approach. Researchers at the Federal Polytechnic School of Lausanne (EPFL) have created a drone with adaptive wings that is 11.5% more energy efficient and stable in turbulence. Another project by American scientists has shown that a variable-geometry wing control algorithm is able to reduce the impact of wind gusts on the device by 84% using only three pressure sensors.
However, the mass implementation of such solutions is still far away. According to Islam Salamov, weather conditions are still the main limitation for unmanned aircraft.
— Today, there are already unmanned aircraft capable of operating in precipitation conditions. We have learned how to make good moisture protection so that water does not get on electronic components and other systems. But even so, such devices still cannot stay in the air for a long time in bad weather. The same applies to strong winds. Both aircraft drones and multirotor vehicles experience difficulties in strong gusts. Therefore, strong winds remain a serious limitation for almost any task," the source notes.
If technologies inspired by bird flight can be put into mass production, drones will be able to operate in more difficult weather conditions. This will expand their use in agriculture, energy, rescue operations and bring closer the emergence of safe household drones — personal assistants capable of working alongside humans.
Why nature is still superior to engineers
Despite the rapid development of unmanned aircraft, engineers have not yet been able to get close to how birds fly. The flight of living organisms is the result of the work of several interconnected systems at once: flexible wings, sensory mechanisms and constant adaptation to air currents.
— The problem with modern unmanned aircraft is that they actually use only one principle of creating thrust. This is either air thrust generated by a propeller, or, if we talk about more complex technology, jet thrust. For most civilian drones — amateur, domestic, and sports — it is the propeller that is used. We can change the number of screws, their shape and size, but the principle remains the same," explains Islam Salamov.
Passive stabilization remains one of the mechanisms that engineers cannot fully reproduce yet. A study by scientists at the Royal Veterinary College of Great Britain has shown that bird wings work on the principle of an automobile suspension. In a sudden gust of wind, they automatically deflect in the shoulder joints, reducing the load on the body even before the brain has time to process the signal. Experiments have shown that this mechanism reduces the impulse transmitted to the bird's body by about 32% in the first 80 milliseconds after exposure to an air stream.
The feathers themselves play an equally important role. A study by biologists at the University of Western Ontario has shown that mechanoreceptors at their base allow birds to detect changes in air flow almost instantly. When the researchers temporarily turned off the sensitivity of these receptors in owls, the accuracy of flight control decreased markedly.
According to Izvestia's interlocutor, the most difficult thing for engineers remains reproducing the variable wing profile.
— To implement such a system using modern technologies, a large number of mechanical elements would have to be placed inside the wing. And mechanics always means reduced reliability, increased mass and cost. That is why it has not yet been possible to create a design that would be both efficient, reliable and competitive," the specialist notes.
It is the complexity of such mechanisms that has so far hindered the development of bioinspired drones. As Islam Salamov emphasizes, devices using the principles of bird flight could potentially become much less noisy, but existing technologies do not yet allow us to create sufficiently compact, reliable and productive mechanisms.
What will the world look like after the advent of "bird" technologies
The development of the kestrel robot is just one example of a new trend in aviation, where engineers strive not just to improve existing designs, but to borrow principles that nature has been honing for millions of years. Increasingly, the object of research is not individual details, but whole biological mechanisms that can make drones more autonomous, efficient and safe.
According to Islam Salamov, this approach is typical not only for unmanned aircraft.
— If you look at it more broadly, almost all modern technologies are inspired by nature to one degree or another. Research is already underway to create unmanned aircraft that look as much like birds as possible and use similar flight principles," he says.
The expert considers the creation of drones for covert surveillance and reconnaissance to be one of the most promising areas. According to him, in case of external similarity of the device and the bird, it is much more difficult to detect it visually. Such devices can be used not only in the field of security, but also in wildlife monitoring, environmental research and monitoring of hard-to-reach areas, where it is important to minimize the impact of technology on the environment.
However, in his opinion, the real future of bioinspired aviation is connected not so much with the external resemblance to birds, as with the emergence of fundamentally new materials. We are talking about electroactive polymers, the so-called artificial muscles, which are able to change shape under the influence of an electrical signal. Unlike traditional mechanisms, they do not require a large number of rotating engines, gears and other complex components, which will potentially make aircraft lighter, more reliable and much quieter.
— Now the main problem is that very high voltages are required for significant deformation of such materials — tens and even hundreds of kilovolts. But scientists are gradually creating new electroactive polymers, which already require much lower voltages — on the order of several kilovolts. If this technology continues to develop, it will be really used in unmanned aircraft and robotic systems," Islam Salamov concludes.
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