Related papers: Optimized Body Deformation in Dragonfly Maneuvers
The design and control of winged aircraft and drones is an iterative process aimed at identifying a compromise of mission-specific costs and constraints. When agility is required, shape-shifting (morphing) drones represent an efficient…
A distinctive feature of quadrupeds that is integral to their locomotion is the tail. Tails serve many purposes in biological systems including propulsion, counterbalance, and stabilization while walking, running, climbing, or jumping.…
In the field of fixed wing aircraft, many morphing technologies have been applied to the wing, such as adaptive airfoil, variable span aircraft, variable swept angle aircraft, etc., but few are aimed at the tail. The traditional fixed wing…
High speed video observations of free flying male Aedes aegypti mosquitoes, the dengue and yellow fever vector, along with custom measurement methods, enable measurement of wingbeat frequency, body position and body orientation of…
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…
Airborne insects generate a leading edge vortex when they flap their wings. This coherent vortex is a low pressure region that enhances the lift of flapping wings compared to fixed wings. Insect wings are thin membranes strengthened by a…
Aerodynamic force generation and mechanical power requirements of a dragonfly (Aeschna juncea) in hovering flight are studied. The method of numerically solving the Navier-Stokes equations in moving overset grids is used. There are two…
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…
This paper presents a novel algorithm to plan energy-efficient trajectories for autonomous ornithopters. In general, trajectory optimization is quite a relevant problem for practical applications with \emph{Unmanned Aerial Vehicles} (UAVs).…
This study investigates the potential for drag-reduction of low-mechanical-order, self-adaptive control systems, consisting of hinged flaps attached along the edges of the rectangular base of a canonical blunt body. Comparative experiments…
This paper proposes a novel control law for accurate tracking of agile trajectories using a tailsitter flying wing unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) that transitions between vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) and forward flight. The global…
Limited flight distance and time is a common problem for multicopters. We propose a method for finding the optimal speed and sideslip angle of a multicopter flying a given path to achieve either the longest flight distance or time. Since…
Groups of aircraft have the potential to save significant amounts of energy by flying in formations; all but the leading aircraft can benefit from the upwash of the wakes of preceding aircraft. A potential obstacle as the number of aircraft…
Deformable substrates such as sand and mud present significant challenges for terrestrial robots due to complex robot-terrain interactions. Inspired by mudskippers, amphibious animals that naturally adjust their tail morphology and movement…
Many animals, modern aircraft, and underwater vehicles use streamlined body shapes that reduce fluid dynamic drag to achieve fast and effective locomotion in air and water. Similarly, numerous small terrestrial animals move through…
Due to aerodynamic instabilities, stabilizing flapping flight requires ever-present fast corrective actions. Here we investigate how flies control body roll angle, their most susceptible degree of freedom. We glue a magnet to each fly,…
Flow control for turbulent skin-friction drag reduction is applied to a transonic airfoil to improve its aerodynamic performance. The study is based on direct numerical simulations (with up to 1.8 billions cells) of the compressible…
The aim of this work is to study the dynamics and stability of soft shape-morphing configurations and specifically the modes of interaction between the front and rear airfoil segments. Initially we present several steady-state solutions,…
In many contexts the modal properties of a structure change, either due to the impact of a changing environment, fatigue, or due to the presence of structural damage. For example during flight, an aircraft's modal properties are known to…
Many kinds of adult Lepidoptera insects possess a long proboscis which is used to suck liquids and has the coiling and uncoiling movements. Although experiments revealed qualitatively that the coiling movement is governed by the hydraulic…