CAREER: Asymmetric avian morphing for enhanced lateral maneuverability

This Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) project seeks to determine how hawks change the shape of their wings and tail during flight to initiate and control turning maneuvers. Raptors maneuver with apparent ease in cluttered environments, such as forests or cities, exceeding the capabilities of comparably sized uncrewed aerial vehicles (UAVs). Lateral maneuvers like turning, rolling, or banking can be initiated by asymmetric changes in the shape and position of the wings or tail, such as folding one wing but not the other. This project will identify which wing and tail changes are used by hawks to turn in flight and quantify how effectively these changes control the resulting maneuvers. The project serves the national interest by promoting the progress of animal flight science and developing biomechanical insights to support avian rehabilitation. Furthermore, the results will inform the design of more maneuverable UAVs that contribute to securing the national defense by facilitating improved disaster-response and urban operations, contributing to Biotechnology priorities. By embedding the research within a collaborative ecosystem at the Center for Animal Locomotion and Innovation, the project strengthens STEM education and workforce development by training engineers, scientists, and veterinarians to communicate and collaborate across disciplinary boundaries. The research outputs will be directly integrated into public educational programming at the California Raptor Center, an online visual series on bird flight, a peer mentoring program across engineering, biology, and veterinary medicine, and undergraduate course curriculum modules that encourage a transdisciplinary approach in research and education. This project combines in vivo motion capture of red-tailed hawks (Buteo jamaicensis), wind-tunnel testing of a morphing wing-tail model, and coupled flight-dynamics modeling to connect biology, aerodynamics, and maneuvering performance. High-resolution imaging facilities will produce time-resolved measurements of dynamic wing-tail configurations employed during hawk turning maneuvers. These morphing actions will then be characterized with wind tunnel measurements of aerodynamic forces and moments to inform the development of a flight dynamics model of a maneuvering hawk. The output data and models will allow the identification of functional relationships between wing and tail control actions and the resulting flight maneuvers. The developed framework will provide a method to test hypotheses about avian and UAV maneuverability while advancing a fundamental understanding of how birds navigate complex environments. An Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning regression model to predict bird wing joint angles from peripheral wing shapes alone will be developed. Together, the integrated research and education activities will address a fundamental question of how birds perform lateral maneuvers and train the next generation of engineers and scientists to address complex challenges at the interface of biology and engineering. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria. NSF Award ID: 2539557 | Program: 01002627DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT,01003031DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT | Principal Investigator: Christina Harvey | Institution: University of California-Davis, DAVIS, CA | Award Amount: $713,504 View on NSF Award Search: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/show-award/?AWD_ID=2539557 View on Research.gov: https://www.research.gov/awardapi-service/v1/awards/2539557.html