The wandering albatross, long a sign of good luck and source of superstition for sailors, could become a latter-day boon to them as the inspiration for a low-energy scouting aircraft. The albatross’s ability to fly for thousands of kilometers over oceans with barely a flap of its wings has inspired the concept of a diminutive, ship launched spotter plane that flies great distances by employing some of the bird’s lift-generating techniques.

The idea is that a drone could help trawler crews spot shoals of fish, or help border patrols spot drug-runners, but with next-to zero energy cost, says Tony Pipe, who leads the project at the Bristol Robotics Laboratory (BRL) in the UK. The idea is the brainchild of Pipe’s colleague, Markus Deittert, who flies gliders in his spare time. The wandering albatross uses many tricks to gain lift and stay airborne for long periods. “They exploit the updrafts over waves and the shear-layers downwind of wave-crests,” says Adrian Thomas, a zoologist specializing in animal flight at the University of Oxford. But another ruse the bird uses is to harness “dynamic soaring”. Unlike thermal soaring over land – flying on rising columns of warm air – dynamic soaring exploits the big differences in wind speed that exist up to about 30 meters above the sea. It is this dynamic soaring capability that the Bristol team wants to harness in a 3 meter-wingspan unscrewed aerial vehicle (UAV).

The layer of air at the ocean’s surface is slowed by friction against the water, while the layers above move progressively faster. For instance, the air at an altitude of 2 meters may be moving at 7 meters per second, but layers above it move ever faster until, at an altitude of about 30 meters, it will be zipping along at 11 meters per second.