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Cyborg insects refer to hybrid robots that integrate living insects with miniature electronic controllers to enable robotic-like programmable control. These creatures exhibit advantages over conventional robots in adaption to complex…
Stationary take-off, without a running start or elevated descent, requires substantial aerodynamic forces to overcome weight, particularly for large birds such as geese exceeding 2 kg. However, the complex wing motion and…
Achieving robust legged locomotion on complex terrains poses challenges due to the high uncertainty in robot-environment interactions. Recent advances in bipedal and quadrupedal robots demonstrate good mobility on rugged terrains but rely…
The flexibility of biological propulsors such as wings and fins is believed to contribute to the higher performance of flying and swimming animals compared with their engineered peers. Flexibility seems to follow a universal design rule…
When navigating complex environments, animals often combine multiple strategies to mitigate the effects of external disturbances. These modalities often correspond to different sources of information, leading to speed-accuracy trade-offs.…
We study the aerodynamics of a flapping flexible wing with a two-vein pattern that mimics the elastic response of insect wings in a simplified manner. The experiments reveal a non-monotonic variation of the thrust force produced by the…
The ability to fly through openings in vegetation allows insects like bees to access otherwise unreachable food sources. The specific visual strategies employed by flying insects during aperture negotiation tasks remain unknown. In this…
The aerodynamic influence of a wing-equipped motorcycle on a pursuing motorcycle presents critical implications for stability and performance. This study investigates the induced flow dynamics, characterized by a turbulent and complex wake…
Fluidic locomotion of flapping Micro Aerial Vehicles (MAVs) can be very complex, particularly when the rules from insect flight dynamics (fast flapping dynamics and light wings) are not applicable. In these situations, widely used averaging…
Local wind conditions strongly influence drone performance: headwinds increase flight time, crosswinds and wind shear hinder agility in cluttered spaces, while tailwinds reduce travel time. Although adaptive controllers can mitigate…
An innovative approach of gaining insight into motor skills involved in human body flight is proposed. The key idea is the creation of a model autonomous system capable of virtually performing skydiving maneuvers. A dynamic skydiver model…
Winds in the atmospheric boundary layer (ABL) display a wide range of velocity profiles and turbulence properties that affect wind turbine wake dynamics. However, standard concurrent-precursor large eddy simulations (LES) often neglect…
Dynamic soaring allows seabirds to harvest mechanical energy from vertical wind shear, but field trajectories lack a benchmark for comparing flight performances across species. We derive a reduced lower bound on transport effort from a…
Thermal soaring saves much energy, but flying large distances in this form represents a great challenge for birds, people and Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs). The solution is to make use of so-called thermals, which are localized, warmer…
Cross-stream migration of a deformable bubble is investigated computationally in a pressure-driven channel flow of a viscoelastic fluid via interface-resolved simulations. The flow equations are solved fully coupled with the Giesekus model…
Although variable-speed three-blade wind turbines are nowadays quite popular, their control remains a challenging task. We propose a new easily implementable model-free control approach with the corresponding intelligent controllers.…
Traffic flow oscillations, including traffic waves, are a common yet incompletely understood feature of congested traffic. Possible mechanisms include traffic flow instabilities, indifference regions or finite human perception thresholds…
This paper presents a data-driven optimal control policy for a micro flapping wing unmanned aerial vehicle. First, a set of optimal trajectories are computed off-line based on a geometric formulation of dynamics that captures the nonlinear…
Experimental assessment of safe and precise flight control algorithms for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) under gusty wind conditions requires the capability to generate a large range of velocity profiles. In this study, we employ a small…
Designing effective control for complex three-dimensional flow fields proves to be non-trivial. Oftentimes, intuitive control strategies lead to suboptimal control. To navigate the control space, we utilize a linear parabolized stability…