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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…
Optical beams and starlight distorted by atmospheric turbulence can be corrected with adaptive optics systems to enable efficient coupling into single-mode fibers. Deformable mirrors, used to flatten the wavefront in astronomical…
Contrary to the stunning feats observed in birds of prey, aerial manipulation and grasping with flying robots still lack versatility and agility. Conventional approaches using rigid manipulators require precise positioning and are subject…
We designed and built a three degrees-of-freedom (DOF) flapping wing robot, Flapperoo, to study the aerodynamic benefits of wing folding and twisting. Forces and moments of this physical model are measured in wind tunnel tests over a…
The ability to control resonant properties of individual metamolecule in a metamaterial structure will offer an ultimate freedom for dynamically shaping wavefronts of electromagnetic radiation for applications such as variable aberration…
Natural materials often feature a combination of soft and stiff phases, arranged to achieve excellent mechanical properties, such as high strength and toughness. Many natural materials have even independently evolved to have similar…
The expansion of programmatically-accessible materials data has cultivated opportunities for data-driven approaches. Highly-automated frameworks like AFLOW not only manage the generation, storage, and dissemination of materials data, but…
Hybrid unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) integrate the efficient forward flight of fixed-wing and vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) capabilities of multicopter UAVs. This paper presents the modeling, control and simulation of a new type of…
Mechanical metamaterials are architected manmade materials that allow for unique behaviors not observed in nature, making them promising candidates for a wide range of applications. Existing metamaterials lack tunability as their properties…
Advances in 3D printing technology now enable the precise positioning of microscopic material voxels to form complex structures. Combined with emerging multi-material capabilities and printable responsive materials, this opens new…
Topologically-engineered mechanical frames are important model constructs for architecture, machine mechanisms, and metamaterials. Despite significant advances in macroscopically fashioned frames, realization and phonon imaging of…
Airfoil shape optimization plays a critical role in the design of high-performance aircraft. However, the high-dimensional nature of airfoil representation causes the challenging problem known as the "curse of dimensionality". To overcome…
As aerial robots gain traction in industrial applications, there is growing interest in enhancing their physical interaction capabilities. Pushing tasks performed by aerial manipulators have been successfully demonstrated in contact-based…
Automatic draping of carbon-fiber prepreg plies for the aerospace industry is a promising technique for lowering the manufacturing costs and to this end, a thorough in-process quality control is crucial. In this paper, out-of-plane defects…
In systems control, the dynamics of a system are governed by modulating its inputs to achieve a desired outcome. For example, to control the thrust of a quad-copter propeller the controller modulates its rotation rate, relying on a…
This paper studies the aeroelasticity of a stiffened cantilever plate using composite material and novel structural layouts. A comprehensive parametric study is conducted to determine the influence of different design parameters on the…
Mechanical metamaterials have continued to offer unprecedented tunability in mechanical properties, but most designs to date have prioritized attaining high stiffness and strength while sacrificing deformability. The emergence of woven…
In this work, we have performed numerical simulations of the flapping motion of a rectangular wing in a three-dimensional flow field using the discrete vortex method (DVM). The DVM method is computationally more convenient because it does…
Soft materials have many important roles in animal locomotion and object manipulation. In robotic applications soft materials can store and release energy, absorb impacts, increase compliance and increase the range of possible shape…
Rigid link flapping mechanisms remain the most practical choice for flapping wing micro-aerial vehicles (MAVs) to carry useful payloads and onboard batteries for free flight due to their long-term durability and reliability. However, MAVs…