Once a satirical conspiracy theory, bird drones could soon be a reality

Listen to Short Wave on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and Google Podcasts.

Millions of people in the U.S. are bird watchers. But, a couple of years ago a satirical conspiracy theory gained popularity because of an absurd claim: that those birds were also watching people.

Specifically, it suggested that "the U.S. government killed over 12 billion birds in the American skies and replaced them with surveillance drone replicas that watch you and me every day," says Peter McIndoe, the founder of the satirical movement – which is called "Birds Aren't Real."

"I came up with that concept cause I thought that's one of the most outlandish things," McIndoe says. But, there was some level of possibility that there could be bird-shaped drones.

In the past couple of years, technology has evolved – simultaneously, trust in science has decreased and more misinformation has spread on the internet.

"The times have sort of grown around the idea, as the years passed, Birds Aren't Real, fits in more and more with things that are actually happening," McIndoe says. Rather than being the stuff of internet memes, some engineers are, in fact, trying to reverse engineer how birds fly to eventually take what they learn to create more efficient bird-like drones.

"Through millions of years of evolution, nature has developed processes, objects, materials and functions to increase its efficiency. So whatever we see in current life, is a treasure of millions of years," says Mostafa Hassanalian, a mechanical engineer at New Mexico Tech.

When engineering imitates life

Birds are often very efficient flyers. Some are able to fly hundreds of miles in a single day. But when Hassanalian tried to replicate some aspects of bird flight in the lab he says he found that "artificial material cannot replicate the actual flight of the birds." The materials he and other engineers had at the time "don't provide us the flexibility that we require to have more efficient aerodynamic forces generated by the wing."

Part of what makes birds such effective fliers is being able to fly upward and forward in the same flap of wing. Most drones, like octocopters and hexacopters, have different instruments to generate these two forces – called lift and thrust.

Engineers and biologists have had to get creative to find all the ways birds maximize their ability to soar through the air. Strapping sensors and other devices to birds directly could change the pattern of their flight, and making mechanical replicas has proven difficult. So eventually Hassanalian decided to stop trying to copy nature.

Instead, he now uses the real thing.

He outfits taxidermied birds with drone components, which allow him to reverse engineer bird flight. It could also serve as a surveillance tool – but for wild animals, not humans. Some scientists have begun trying to use drone-mounted cameras to monitor wildlife. But traditional drones "create a lot of noise. Most of the time, animals will be scared and scattered and it puts them in distress," Hassanalian says.

From quadcopters to bird-drones

The lessons researchers are learning from birds could translate into better drones. Along with the structure of bird wings, the coloration of some birds allows them to coast in the air more efficiently. Many seabirds, like albatrosses, have black feathers on the top of their wings and white on the bottom, which heats the air on top of the bird and generates lift.

Birds also save energy by being more flexible than human devices. For instance, modern planes are chock full of devices to measure changes in the environment around them. "That means many motors, many sensors and a complicated control loop – so many moving parts and that's just not possible," says David Lentink, an engineer at the University of Groningen. "But that's not how birds do it." Birds have elastic ligaments between their feathers and pliable bones that can allow for a seamless shifting as the wind changes.

Still, researchers are working to close the gap between manmade drones and birds.

"One of the biggest advantages of a bio-inspired robot, the flying ones especially, is the resilience of the vehicle," says Xinyan Deng, an engineer at Purdue University who has designed a robot based on a hummingbird. Even after testing it in a complicated obstacle course, where it is bouncing against different objects and subsequently cutting its wings off, the drone still worked. It was able to lean on its other wing more and continue flying.

Deng says the field of biomimetics has matured a lot in the past couple of years, and it makes a world where drones are not as easily distinguishable from birds. "Maybe in the future, not so distant future, you will not be able to distinguish the real and the artificial birds," she says.

But she does not portend a future as dystopian as McIndoe's viral conspiracy theory.

"Technology is like a double edged sword, but I think I really like the idea of a companion birds and a toy for kids," she says. "Nature is such a wonderful gift to humans.We should respect it and build manmade vehicles to do good things."

Want to learn more about innovations in science? Email us at shortwave@npr.org.

Listen to Short Wave on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and Google Podcasts.

Today's episode was produced by Rachel Carlson. It was edited by Rebecca Ramirez. Brit Hanson checked the facts. Stacey Abbott and Cena Loffredo were the audio engineers.