Fig. 1: The perching maneuver by Harris’ hawks and avian-inspired drone.

a Schematic overview of a typical perching maneuver consisting of a dive phase (light blue line) and of an agile climb phase (blue line) (see also Supplementary Movie 1, adapted from ref. ²⁶); the illustrated bird shows the optimal control strategies displayed by the Harris' hawk (light brown) and by the avian-inspired drone (black/blue). b Comparison of Harris' hawks of the study²⁶ and the avian-inspired LisEagle drone¹⁷. We indicate the wing and tail sweep joints in red and list the mass, wing area, and wing span of the two.