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Bio-Inspired Synergistic Wing and Tail Morphing Extends Flight Capabilities of Drones

The operation of drones in cluttered environments and over extended areas demands adaptive flight capabilities to meet the opposing aerodynamic requirements of agile and fast cruise flight. High agility and maneuverability are required to aggressively navigate around obstacles and to perform instantaneous takeoffs or landings, while high energy efficiency is desired when covering large distances. In nature, these requirements are met by some birds by synergistic adaptation of wings and tail, such as the northern goshawk, which displays high agility and maneuverability when flying through forests and fast steady flight capabilities when ambushing prey in the open field. In this article, we experimentally study the effects of bio-inspired wing and tail morphing on flight performance by means of a novel morphing drone. We show that the combined morphing of wing and tail can improve agility, maneuverability, stability, flight velocity range, and energy efficiency of a winged drone. The drone's flight performance is validated in wind tunnel tests, shape optimization studies and outdoor flight tests.