For a long time, the best aeronautical researchers and scientists have been studying the way in which birds are able to fly, a technology that has ultimately been continually evolving since the first dinosaurs began to soar through the skies of our planet ago. more than 160 million years. Even so, for the engineers this system has a very important limitation since the wings serve the birds both to rise and for the flight itself, but curiously, once you are in the air, most of the wings prevent you from going even faster.
The solution that nature has found has been brilliant since, as you surely know, birds can change the shape of their wings thanks to a system of overlapping feathers already a joint at the end of the wing. In this way, most birds can fold their primary flight feathers, which significantly reduces the surface area of their wings so that they can switch between a long, manageable wing, good for landing and take-off tasks as well as changing gears. heading at low speed, and much shorter wings ideal for high speeds.
These artificial wings perfectly mimic the behavior of the wings of birds existing in nature.
As humans we have to recognize that we have evolved our flight systems much more slowly until we have finally been able to truly understand the shape of bird wings as well as how they work. In the Federal Polytechnic School of Lausanne (Switzerland), have been working on the development and testing of a small drone with folding wings that can maneuver like a real bird.
The operation of this drone is very simple, thanks to this system it is can vary the surface of each wing by 41%. When the wing is fully folded, the drag decreases, increasing the maximum speed of the drone itself from 6,3 meters / second to 7,6 meters / second. As a negative characteristic we have that the maneuverability of the drone with the folded wing decreases considerably, increasing its turning radius from 3,9 meters to 6,6 meters.