Related papers: Fruit flies modulate passive wing pitching to gene…
The flight characteristics of bats remarkably have been overlooked in aerial drone designs. Unlike other animals, bats leverage the manipulation of inertial dynamics to exhibit aerial flip turns when they perch. Inspired by this unique…
Possibilities for using geometry and topology to analyze statistical problems in biology raise a host of novel questions in geometry, probability, algebra, and combinatorics that demonstrate the power of biology to influence the future of…
Wind dispersal of seeds is one essential mechanisms for plants to proliferate and to invade new territories. In this paper we present a methodology that combines 3D-printing, a minimal theoretical model and experiments to determine the…
The purpose of this work is to explain how wings work and how they were invented. We use the lens of history, looking at the individual people who wanted to fly, the lens of technology, looking at the key inventions leading up to modern…
We discuss the problem of designing and implementing controllers for insect-scale flapping-wing micro air vehicles (FWMAVs), from a unifying perspective and employing two different experimental platforms; namely, a Harvard RoboBee-like…
Drones, like most airborne aerial vehicles, face inherent disadvantages in achieving agile flight due to their limited thrust capabilities. These physical constraints cannot be fully addressed through advancements in control algorithms…
Diversity and specialization of behavior in insects is unmatched. Insects hop, walk, run, jump, row, swim, glide and fly to propel themselves in a variety of environments. We have uncovered an unusual mode of propulsion of aerodynamic…
Insect-scale micro-aerial vehicles, especially lightweight, flapping-wing robots, are becoming increasingly important for safe motion sensing in spatially constrained environments such as living spaces. However, yaw control using flapping…
Wing articulation is critical for efficient flight of bird- and bat-sized animals. Inspired by the flight of $\textit{Cynopterus brachyotis}$, the lesser short-nosed fruit bat, we built a two-degree-of-freedom flapping wing platform with…
Here we report the construction of the simplest transmission mechanism ever designed capable of converting linear motions of any actuator to $\pm$60$^\circ$ rotary wing stroke motion. It is planar, compliant, can be fabricated in a single…
Flexible plants, fungi, and sessile animals are thought to reconfigure in the wind and water to reduce the drag forces that act upon them. In strong winds, for example, leaves roll up into cone shapes that reduce flutter and drag when…
Stick insect stepping patterns have been studied for insights about locomotor rhythm generation and control, because the underlying neural system is relatively accessible experimentally and produces a variety of rhythmic outputs. Harnessing…
Early olfactory pathway responses to the presentation of an odor exhibit remarkably similar dynamical behavior across phyla from insects to mammals, and frequently involve transitions among quiescence, collective network oscillations, and…
This paper invented a new rolling control mechanism of two section articulated-wing ornithopter, which is analogues to aileron control in plane, however, similar control mechanism leads to opposite result, indicating the ornithopter…
Plants are a paradigm for active shape control in response to stimuli. For instance, it is well-known that a tilted plant will eventually straighten vertically, demonstrating the influence of both an external stimulus, gravity, and an…
Insects and birds are often faced by opposing requirements for agile and stable flight. Here, we explore the interplay between aerodynamic effort, maneuverability, and stability in a model system that consists of a $\Lambda$-shaped flyer…
Bats' dynamic morphing wings are known to be extremely high-dimensional, and they employ the combination of inertial dynamics and aerodynamics manipulations to showcase extremely agile maneuvers. Bats heavily rely on their highly flexible…
The current study uses large eddy simulations to investigate the transient response of a utility-scale wind turbine wake to dynamic changes in atmospheric and operational conditions, as observed in previous field-scale measurements. Most…
Sub-gram flapping-wing flying insect robots (FIRs) are challenging to model because of mechanical complexity in their wings, unsteady aerodynamic flow, and the difficulty of making precise measurements at a small scale. Coupling effects…
Plant-pollinator associations are often seen as purely mutualistic, while in reality they can be more complex. Indeed they may also display a diverse array of antagonistic interactions, such as competition and victim--exploiter…