Inspiration for wing design: how forelimb specialization enables active flight in modern vertebrates.

ABSTRACT: Harnessing flight strategies refined by millions of years of evolution can help expedite the design of more efficient, manoeuvrable and robust flying robots. This review synthesizes recent advances and highlights remaining gaps in our understanding of how bird and bat wing adaptations enable effective flight. Included in this discussion is an evaluation of how current robotic analogues measure up to their biological sources of inspiration. Studies of vertebrate wings have revealed skeletal systems well suited for enduring the loads required during flight, but the mechanisms that drive coordinated motions between bones and connected integuments remain ill-described. Similarly, vertebrate flight muscles have adapted to sustain increased wing loading, but a lack of in vivo studies limits our

SUBMITTER: Chin DD 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5493806 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature