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research article

A twist of the tail in turning maneuvers of a bird-inspired feathered drone

Phan, Hoang Vu  
•
Floreano, Dario  
November 20, 2024
Science Robotics

A banked turn is a common flight maneuver observed in birds and aircraft. To initiate the turn, whereas traditional aircraft rely on the wing ailerons, most birds use a variety of asymmetric wing-morphing control techniques to roll their bodies and thus redirect the lift vector to the direction of the turn. Nevertheless, when searching for prey, soaring raptors execute steady banked turns without exhibiting observable wing movements apart from the tail twisting around the body axis. Although tail twisting can compensate for adverse yaw, functioning similarly to the vertical tail in aircraft, how raptors use only tail twisting to perform banked turns is still not well understood. Here, we developed and used a raptor-inspired feathered drone to find that the proximity of the tail to the wings causes asymmetric wing-induced flows over the twisted tail and thus lift asymmetry, resulting in both roll and yaw moments sufficient to coordinate banked turns. Moreover, twisting the tail induces a nose-up pitch moment that increases the angle of attack of the wings, thereby generating more lift to compensate for losses caused by the banking motion. Flight experiments confirm the effectiveness of tail twist to control not only low-speed steady banked turns but also high-speed sharp turns by means of coordinated tail twist and pitch with asymmetric wing shape morphing. These findings contribute to the understanding of avian flight behaviors that are difficult to study in controlled laboratory settings and provide effective control strategies for agile drones with morphing aerial surfaces.

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Type
research article
DOI
10.1126/scirobotics.ado3890
Author(s)
Phan, Hoang Vu  
•
Floreano, Dario  
Date Issued

2024-11-20

Publisher

AMER ASSOC ADVANCEMENT SCIENCE

Published in
Science Robotics
Volume

9

Issue

96

Article Number

eado3890

Subjects

Bird-inspired morphing drones

•

Aerial robotics

•

Rudderless drone

•

Tail twisting

•

Raptor

•

Feathered drones

Peer reviewed

REVIEWED

Written at

EPFL

EPFL units
LIS  
FunderFunding(s)Grant NumberGrant URL

European Union’s Horizon 2020

AERIAL-CORE

871479

Armasuisse

8003529756

Available on Infoscience
November 21, 2024
Use this identifier to reference this record
https://infoscience.epfl.ch/handle/20.500.14299/242115
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