Rules to fly by: pigeons navigating horizontal obstacles limit steering by selecting gaps most aligned to their flight direction.

ABSTRACT: Flying animals must successfully contend with obstacles in their natural environments. Inspired by the robust manoeuvring abilities of flying animals, unmanned aerial systems are being developed and tested to improve flight control through cluttered environments. We previously examined steering strategies that pigeons adopt to fly through an array of vertical obstacles (VOs). Modelling VO flight guidance revealed that pigeons steer towards larger visual gaps when making fast steering decisions. In the present experiments, we recorded three-dimensional flight kinematics of pigeons as they flew through randomized arrays of horizontal obstacles (HOs). We found that pigeons still decelerated upon approach but flew faster through a denser array of HOs compared with the VO array previously teste

SUBMITTER: Ros IG 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5206610 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature