Related papers: Bees with attitude: the effect of gusts on flight …

This paper presents a dynamic model and a control system for a flapping-wing unmanned aerial vehicle. Inspired by flight characteristics captured from live Monarch butterflies, a new dynamic model is presented to account the effects of…

In swarms of flying insects, the motions of individuals are largely uncoordinated with those of their neighbors, unlike the highly ordered motion of bird flocks. However, it has been observed that insects may transiently form pairs with…

Search processes in the natural world are often punctuated by home returns that reset the position of foraging animals, birds, and insects. Many theoretical, numerical, and experimental studies have now demonstrated that this strategy can…

This paper investigates stability analysis of flapping flight. Due to time-varying aerodynamic forces, such systems do not display fixed points of equilibrium. The problem is therefore approached via a limit cycle analysis based on Floquet…

This paper discusses the wing inertial effects on stability of pitch motion of hovering insects. The paper also presents a dynamic model appropriate for using averaging techniques and discusses the pitch stability results derived from the…

Hovering insects are limited by their physiology and need to rotate their wings at the end of each back and forth motion to keep the wing's leading edge ahead of its trailing edge. The wing rotation at the end of each half-stroke pushes the…

Insects and hummingbirds exhibit extraordinary flight capabilities and can simultaneously master seemingly conflicting goals: stable hovering and aggressive maneuvering, unmatched by small scale man-made vehicles. Flapping Wing Micro Air…

Flapping-wing insects, birds, and robots are thought to offset the high power cost of oscillatory wing motion by using elastic elements for energy storage and return. Insects possess highly resilient elastic regions in their flight anatomy…

The motility skills of phytoplankton have evolved and persisted over millions of years, primarily in response to factors such as nutrient and light availability, temperature and viscosity gradients, turbulence, and predation pressure.…

Abdominal Undulation with Compliant Mechanism Improves Flight Performance of Biomimetic Robotic ButterflThis paper presents the design, modeling, and experimental validation of a biomimetic robotic butterfly (BRB) that integrates a…

Birds have a remarkable ability to perform complex maneuvers at post-stall angles of attack. The passive deployment of self-actuating covert feathers in response to unsteady flow separation while performing such maneuvers provides a passive…

Bio-inspired design is often used in autonomous UAV navigation due to the capacity of biological systems for flight and obstacle avoidance despite limited sensory and computational capabilities. In particular, honeybees mainly use the…

Our goal in this work is to expand the theory and practice of robot locomotion by addressing critical challenges associated with the robotic biomimicry of bat aerial locomotion. Bats are known for their pronounced, fast wing articulations,…

Control of a hybrid dynamical system can manifest in one of two main ways: either through the continuous or the discrete dynamics. An example of controls influencing the continuous dynamics is legged locomotion, where the joints are…

The flight of biological butterflies represents a unique aerodynamic regime where high-amplitude, low-frequency wingstrokes induce significant body undulations and inertial fluctuations. While existing tailless flapping-wing micro air…

High resolution direct numerical simulations of rotating and flapping bumblebee wings are presented and their aerodynamics is studied focusing on the role of leading edge vortices and the associated helicity production. We first study the…

Jumping take-off in birds is an explosive behaviour with the goal of providing a rapid transition from ground to airborne locomotion. An effective jump is predicated on the need to maintain dynamic stability through the acceleration phase.…

Collective animal movements produce spectacular natural phenomena that arise from simple local interactions among group members. Flocks of homing pigeons, Columba livia, provide a useful model for the study of collective motion and decision…

The smallest flying insects often have bristled wings resembling feathers or combs. We combined experiments and three-dimensional numerical simulations to investigate the trade-off between wing weight and drag generation. In experiments of…

Bristled and membranous insect wings have co-evolved despite apparently serving the same functionality. We emulate flight physics using an automated free-fall experiment to better understand how and why several distinct wing forms may have…