Posts Tagged ‘birds’
A Heated Robotic Mother Hen Improves Quail Chicks’ Spatial Learning Abilities
QuailBot has a space between its wheels where chicks can go get warm
Researchers at the University of Rennes in France built two comfy cube-shaped robotic mother hens, and introduced them to 36-hour-old Japanese quail chicks. The team took 24 chicks and divided them into groups of four. All six groups hung out with the robot for an hour a day for 10 days in a row, according to an . Three groups spent time with a mobilized version of the robot, and three groups got a stationary one. The chicks stopped interacting with the robot after the 10th day.
On the 13th day, the researchers placed the chicks back with their robots and watched what happened. The chicks with the mobile robot mother moved around a lot more, emitting more distress calls. The chicks with the immovable object mother were less active.
On the 14th day, the researchers placed the chicks facing each other, with a grid in the way. The chicks with the mobile mommy navigated around the grid more quickly than the chicks with a stationary HenBot, the researchers said. All this is to show that the chicks with a mobile robot mother had a slight advantage in spatial understanding.
But here’s the rub: This evaporated after a few days. On the 20th day, the team repeated the grid experiment, and found the chicks with the stationary robot had improved so much, there was no longer a significant difference in their behavior.
Still, it’s an interesting example of how robotic technology can impact animal development. Imagine a zoo or a rehabilitation center with some orphaned animals; if they have a movable object the birds can bond with, the birds might do a little better, this study suggests.
The other QuailBot we’ve seen was developed to monitor . It's nice to know this new QuailBot could conceivably help their offspring.
The study was published in the journal Bioinspiration and Biomimetics.
[]
A Treasure Trove of Dinosaur Protofeathers, Trapped in Amber
some amazing photos of feathers trapped in amber.
Some other tidbits: The researchers can even tell if the feathers were colored or not, due to the amount of pigment cells preserved thanks to the amber. So far as they can tell, the feathers had a range of color, from solid to mottled to transparent. It's not immediately clear which feathers belonged to early birds and which to non-avian dinosaurs, but the level to which they're some modern birds like the relatively ancient grebe is pretty striking.
The study can be read in full in tomorrow's issue of Science.
How Darpa’s Tiny Robotic Hummingbird Hovers and Films
to discover how the hummingbird flies and rolls.
Finally, AeroVironment has a working prototype: the 6.5-inch-wingspan Nano Hummingbird. “It was never our intention to copy what nature has done; it’s just too daunting,” says Matt Keennon, the UAV’s head researcher. The camera-equipped bird beats its wings 20 times a second, whereas hummingbirds clock up to 80. Still, it can hover like the real thing, plus perform rolls and even backflips. Here’s how the bird flies.
WingsA skeleton of hollow carbon-fiber rods is wrapped in fiber mesh and coated in a polyvinyl fluoride film.
CameraThe camera angle is defined by the pitch of the Nano’s body. Forward motion gives the operator a view of the ground, aiding navigation. Hovering is good for surveying rooms.
Body It weighs 18.7 grams (less than an AA battery). The craft is remote-controlled, but an onboard computer corrects speed and pitch.
Video: Seagull Robot Takes Off And Flies On Its Own, Just Like the Real Thing
Fly like a seagull into the future
Designed by the German firm Festo, which also brought us the robotic arm and the autonomous , SmartBird is Festo’s newest entry in its Bionic Learning Network program, which involves several universities in the U.S. and Europe and aims to use nature as a model for mechatronic systems.
The bird has a 6.5-foot wingspan, so it’s much larger than a real gull, but it looks pretty much like the real thing, as you can see in the video below.
SmartBird flies like a seagull thanks to an active torsion system combined with a complex control system. Its wings each consist of a two-part arm wing spar with an axle bearing on the torso. The wings and tail are the only mechanisms creating lift, and Festo engineers had to figure out bird flight in order to do it.
The company explains: “First, the wings beat up and down, whereby a lever mechanism causes the degree of deflection to increase from the torso to the wing tip. Second, the wing twists in such a way that its leading edge is directed upwards during the upward stroke, so that the wing adopts a positive angle of attack.”
The tail acts as an elevator and rudder, stabilizing the bird in straight-line flight and helping it change direction. Here's how it works:
Perhaps not as unobtrusive as the teeny , but impressive nonetheless.
[via ]
Video: DARPA’s Nano-Hummingbird Spy Drone Can Fly For Eight Minutes And Perch On Your Sill
The drone, built by AeroVironment with funding from DARPA, is able to fly forwards, backwards, and sideways, as well as rotate clockwise and counterclockwise. Not only does the 'bot resemble its avian inspiration in size (it's only slightly larger than a hummingbird, with a 6.5-inch wingspan and a weight of 19 grams), it also looks impressively like a hummingbird in flight. That's not vanity--it's key to the drone's use as a spy device, as it can perch near its subject without alerting it (supposing that area has a population of hummingbirds--the usual reaction to seeing a hummingbird here in midtown Manhattan is something like "OMG you guys look at the hummingbird!!!!!!," which is not necessarily an ideal situation for a spy-drone).
The drone can currently fly for about eight minutes, impressive considering that range was only 20 seconds a short two years ago. But the engineers aren't satisfied, branding the current drone a prototype and continuing to work on it. Within a decade, says AeroVironment's project manager, this drone could easily be counted on to carry out complex and difficult reconnaissance missions.
[via ]
Woodpeckers’ Heads Inspire New Shock-Absorbing Systems for Electronics and Humans
The spongy bones and tough-as-nails beaks of woodpeckers are inspiring a , potentially shielding airplane black boxes, football players and other valuable materials from the forces of impact.
Woodpeckers hammer their beaks into trees at the astonishing rate of 18 to 22 times per second, subjecting their brains to deceleration forces of 1200 g with each strike. This is more than 100 times the g-force required to give a football player a concussion, according to research conducted by the NFL — when the Green Bay Packers and Pittsburgh Steelers meet in the Super Bowl on Sunday, players subjected to could be sidelined.
Sang-Hee Yoon and Sungmin Park of the University of California-Berkeley set out to learn how woodpeckers can survive such . They found the birds’ anatomy acts to protect their brains in four ways. Their beaks are hard but elastic; their skull bones are spongy; there’s very little room for fluid between the skull and brain, cutting down on vibrations; and they have a special structure called the hyloid layer, attached to the woodpeckers’ tongues to reduce vibration, New Scientist reports. Airplane black boxes can survive about 1,000 g.
The researchers came up with mechanical analogues for all these capabilities, and built a new type of shock-absorbing device involving glass beads embedded in a steel-encased aluminum cylinder. They pelted it with an airgun and found it protected its contents against 60,000 g, , published in the journal Bioinspiration and Biomimetics.
To mimic the beak’s , the researchers started with a steel case. To evenly distribute load and cut down on vibration, like the hyloid, they added a rubber layer. The thin layer of fluid was represented by a second metal shell, this one made of aluminum, and inside that they used closely packed 1-mm-diameter glass beads, to simulate the skull’s sponginess. The electronic device was embedded in the beads.
Along with protecting electronics, the four-part case could yield new protection technologies for the armed forces, athletes and racecar drivers.
Both and football-helmet-maker are studying advanced head-protection gear that aims to reduce the pressure on the front of the brain, where most concussions occur. Multi-layered systems like this new bird-inspired case could be another step in that direction.
[]
Five Hundred More Dead Birds in Louisiana Further Puzzle Investigators
That speculation began with fingers pointing at the weather over Beebe at the time of the blackbird decimation, as thunderstorms were just departing the area when the birds began dropping from the sky before midnight of New Year’s Eve (ominous!). , gathering some opinions from ornithological experts, reported that perhaps foul weather was the culprit.
This has happened before – flocks of birds can be caught off guard in bad weather, literally plucked from their roosts and thrust into the air by violent weather systems, leaving them disoriented, cold, and sometimes without life.
Later yesterday, other sources were reporting that loud the Arkansas incident. Necropsies performed yesterday showed the Arkansas birds suffered internal injuries that formed blood clots that went to their brains. It’s conceivable that loud noise (NYE fireworks?) could have startled a flock, causing them to rapidly change course and plunge headlong into buildings or tall trees, sustaining blunt traumas that led to their collective death.
Of course, none of this accounts for the 500 freshly dead birds in Louisiana. Those, of course, could be completely unrelated to the Arkansas birds (don’t be fooled by randomness, people). But we like a good conspiracy theory better. Besides, what about all those dead drum? Something smells fishy indeed, but who could possibly benefit from knocking off a bunch of birds in the American south? NASA? BP? Aliens? Our money is on Captain Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger, who was never really afforded an opportunity to even the score with his avian nemeses.
Feel free to leave your own thoughts on these odd happenings below.
[]