Flight Strategy Of Seagulls Could Help In Planning Flights Paths For Drones, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

Researchers from Swansea University and Department of Aerospace Engineering, University of Bristol discovered that the flight strategies of the seagulls could help when planning flight paths for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) and drones. The team examined how gulls use the rising air made by buildings to fly without flapping.

The study was printed in the Royal Society Publishing. It was led by Emily L.C. Shepard, Senior Lecturer  from Department of BioSciences in Swansea University, Cara Williamson and Shane P. Windsor from Department of Aerospace Engineering in the University of Bristol.

The team of researchers used computational fluid dynamic models to monitor how gulls reacted to airflows around the buildings. They said that birds systematically changed their flight trajectories with wind conditions to exploit updraughts over features as a row of low-rise buildings. They further said that human activities can change patterns of space-use in flying birds by altering the profitability of the airscape.

The researchers found that gulls varied their position to select a narrow range of updraught values, rather than using the strongest updraughts available. Their precise positions were consistent with a strategy to heighten their velocity control in gusty conditions. The flight strategies as these could aid unmanned aerial vehicles to manage complex airflows, which have profound implications for flight control and energy use. This could also lead to a shift in theory on the way ecologists view the urban environment.

Shepard explained that this interesting flight strategy doesn't only help in understanding the lives of gulls. This could also prove useful when planning flight paths for drones or unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in urban landscapes. "So next time you are feeling ill-disposed towards gulls soaring in city spaces, possibly shielding your ice-creams as you stroll along the seafront, stop a moment to appreciate the complex decisions that these feathered pilots are making, second by second, as they respond to their continually changing aerial environment, in ways that engineers can, for now, only dream of," Shepard told IFL Science.