大多数人看一只鸽子，看看胖乎乎的，常见的，无聊的鸟。一个“翅膀的老鼠”，常见的纽约人普拉斯。然而，当大卫·吉尔·斯凯尔在建筑物周围看着一只鸽子镖完全落在河流上时，他看到了机器人飞行的未来。
Lentink, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering at Stanford, has been studying birds in flight for years, with an eye toward applying the tricks birds use to navigate changing conditions in the real world to design better aerial robots. Most of the insights he and his colleagues have gained so far have resulted from painstaking study, involving calculations of wing force dynamics inspired by footage captured in the wild.
Now, with the construction of one of the most advanced bird wind tunnels in the world, Lentink hopes to reveal even more of the magic of bird flight.
With the recent boom in drone use, it’s easy to forget that the robots frequently fail in windy conditions. Consider flying a drone down an “urban canyon” like Fifth Avenue in New York City. Turbulence varies wildly from the middle of the “canyon” to alongside the skyscrapers, and obstacles like traffic lights pop up frequently. Now, throw in a few dozen drones fighting for position like the taxis below. It’s a nightmare for drone operators.
“但你抬头,你会看到一只鸽子出招了casually. It has no problem stabilizing itself, flying around corners, dodging cables and landing on a perch,” Lentink said. “It’s just something we haven’t accomplished in robotics yet. We need to study birds up close so we can figure out what their secret is to flying so stably under such difficult conditions, and apply that to aerial robotic design.”
新的风洞就像一只超级欺骗的跑步机。由风扇产生的风扇大致甲状大众甲虫的大小，超光滑：湍流检查左右.015％，不到世界上任何其他鸟类风洞的一半。这使研究人员能够研究鸟类如何在流动的空气中飞行，例如在较高的高度上发现。
Such conditions aren’t typical closer to the ground, particularly around trees and buildings, though, so the tunnel is fitted with a “turbulence generating system,” a series of computer-controlled wind vanes that can precisely simulate different turbulence patterns, creating up to 50 percent turbulence. In this state, the flow moves almost equally randomly in all directions, making it very unpredictable for the bird.
Cruising speed for birds
风速也是高度可调的。Lentk的实验室学习的爱情鸟，鹦鹉和蜂鸟通常巡航大约7米/秒，工程师可以完美地搭配学习持续飞行。它们偶尔将曲柄曲柄高达15米/秒，这模拟强风，为大鸟类20米/秒。
Lentink is fiercely protective of his birds, and said this would be the maximum speed he would consider letting larger birds fly to keep them comfortable. The tunnel can blow much faster, however, with speeds up to 50 m/s for the prototype drones he plans to test in the tunnel.
近两米长,六面窗口的观察ervation section of the tunnel provides Lentink and his students a variety of ways to study bird flight. They currently zero in on specific aspects of birds’ wing beats, using high speed cameras as well as motion capture techniques more commonly utilized in Hollywood films, recording wing motion millisecond by millisecond. They then translate these measurements to precise calculations of the force dynamics experienced along the birds’ wings and in the surrounding air. Later this summer, Lentink expects to introduce two fluoroscopes to the mix, which will allow researchers to “see inside” the bird and visualize the exact muscular-skeletal movements it makes in different flight maneuvers.
一旦他的团队接受了足够的鸟类，Lentink计划计划在隧道中飞行整个鸡群，以确定一只鸟的翼拍的湍流如何影响附近的鸟，以及它们如何操纵位置。这两项测量都将为未来的天空提供有无人机的未来天空提供关键的基础信息。
使用从鸟飞机收集的信息，Lentink Envisions使用隧道作为新的空中机器人设计的测试床。除了建立普通Quadcopter设计的更好的机动性控制外，他特别感兴趣地建造鸟类翅膀的机器人，以便在湍流空气流动中保持稳定性。
欺骗鸟教我们
“自从奥托·莱昂和赖特兄弟学习鸟类来发明飞机以来，工程师依赖于与生物学家谈话，以学习诀窍鸟类，”Lentink说：Stanford Bio-X. Although the wind tunnel will enable engineers to develop safer and more reliable drones that fly in urban environments as well as birds do, Lentink stressed that it is not only an engineering facility. It is a top-notch biology lab that meets and exceeds all animal research standards enabled by the very best technology Stanford offers.
Lentink, who is both a biologist and an engineer, teaches engineering students and biology postdocs how to collaborate.
“Our bird tunnel is really unique, and I’m incredibly thankful to my colleagues and the School of Engineering who thought it was an awesome idea to enable engineering students to study how birds fly to develop better flying robots and made this possible,” Lentink said. “The facility has been built with great care by people within the School of Engineering, and I’m really excited about the opportunity to study bird flight up close with engineering students who bring different interests ranging from biomechanics to fluid mechanics to aeronautics in our team of engineers and biologists.”
The wind tunnel was paid for by Stanford. The various measurement systems were acquired with support from the Air Force, Navy, Army, Human Frontiers Science Program, and Stanford Bio-X program.
提起：M2M（机器到机器）
