Hawks control their flight to ensure the safest landing conditions even if it takes longer and more energy. Understanding how birds learn may help in the development of small aircraft that can perch.
Four Harris' hawks wore retroreflective markers and were tracked between two perches. The research team was able to reconstruct their flight paths with the help of motion capture cameras in the room. The research team used simulations to figure out why the birds chose a certain path.
It is possible for aircraft to use a runway to reduce speed. Birds have to brake before they reach the perch, however slowing down to a safe speed while in flight can lead to a sudden loss of flight control. The researchers found that the hawks follow a flight path that slows them down to a safe speed but keeps them away from their perch.
The hawks spread their wings and swooped up to the perch to avoid stall. By selecting just the right speed and position from which to swoop up to the perch, the birds were already within grabbing distance of the perch when they stopped.
The University of Oxford's Department of Biology's Dr. Lydia France said that the birds weren't the cheapest option for getting from A to B.
The three juvenile birds flew directly between the perches by flapping for the first few flights of their familiarisation period but soon adopted the indirect swooping behavior characteristic of experienced birds.
Many aircraft accidents have been the result of stalling. We might be able to find new bioinspired design solutions for our own technologies if we look at birds and ask how they solve the problem of safe landing.
Artificial intelligence could be improved by understanding how birds learn landing tasks. It can take hundreds of hours to find a solution to the problem of perching using a trial-and-error approach. The hawks show the gap between natural and artificial intelligence by finding an optimal solution over a few flights.
We've been able to analyse thousands of flights at a time using motion capture technology. Prof Graham Taylor said that this opens the possibility of understanding how animals learn to fly and how robotic systems can do the same.
More information: Marco KleinHeerenbrink et al, Optimization of avian perching manoeuvres, Nature (2022). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-022-04861-4 Journal information: Nature
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