In the context of the ERC project PortWings a unique robotic bird is studied.
An experiment which would be new to do would be to let a real full-size bird fly in a large wind tunnel so that it would be possible to grab a lot of data with PIV or PTV. It would be maybe possible to do so, by connecting a wire on the nose of the bird connected to a fixed point in the centre of the wind tunnel source. By measuring the angle of this wire and its tension it should be possible to steer the bird to keep it flying in the centre of the stream.
To test this idea, we would like to work toward a scaled set-up with a small fixed-wing plane from which we can control its attitude. Such a plane can be connected with a wire to a fixed point where a small mechanism could measure the direction of the wire and an elastic element the traction force of the wire. By placing this in the middle of a big fan, and developing a control system which can steer the plane based on the angle measured and the traction force, it should be possible to validate the concept for the real wind tunnel in this scaled set-up.
The assignment would start with developing the device for the cable and the force sensing and do some initial testing on this concept.