Conference of the French Society for Biomechanics

By Christine Böhmer on Sunday, October 27 2019, 18:00 - Permalink

The Avineck team participates at the Conference of the French Society for Biomechanics in Poitiers.

The 44th conference of the French Society for Biomechanics (Congrès de la Société de Biomécanique) tooks place in Poitiers (France) in 2019. The scientific program includes a number of interesting contibrutions to the following overall topics:

  • Biofluid mechanics
  • Humanoid robotics
  • Sports biomechanics
  • Cellular and tissue biomechaincs
  • Biomechanics and palaeontology

Avineck project leader Anick Abourachid gave an overview of the Avineck project. A number of people are involved in the project that uses the neck of birds as a model for an arm for robots. The team collected a lot of data on various aspects of the anatomy, functional morphology and ecology of the avian neck.
Avineck postdoc Christine Böhmer presented the collaborative work on the biomechanics of the neck in woodpeckers. Woodpeckers are one of the three model species that we study within the ANR-funded project Avineck in Paris. The versatility of the neck in birds is an excellent opportunity for bioengineering, but prior to designing a technological model, the biological system must be understood; in particular regarding the form-function relationships.

References:
Böhmer C, Fasquelle B, Furet M, Wenger P and Abourachid A (2019). Combining precision and power to maximize performance: a case study of the woodpecker’s neck. Computer Methods in Biomechanics and Biomedical Engineering: Supplement for the International French Society of Biomechanics 2019 Conference, Poitiers, France. [PDF]

Puverel C, Abourachid A, Böhmer C, Leban J-M, Svoboda  M and Paillet Y (2019) This is my spot: what are the characteristics of the trees excavated by the Black Woodpecker? A case study in two managed French forests. Forest Ecology and Management 453: 117621. DOI: 10.1016/j.foreco.2019.117621.

Fasquelle B, Furet M, Abourachid A, Böhmer C, Chablat D, Chevallereau C and Wenger P (2019) Modelling, design and control of a bird neck using tensegrity mechanisms, IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, Tensegrity Workshop, Montreal, Canada, 2019.

Abourachid A and Böhmer C (2019). The neck of the birds, from for to function. International Congress of Vertebrate Morphology (ICVM) in Prague, Czech Republic.