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Walking animals, like stick insects, cockroaches or ants, demonstrate a fascinating range of locomotive abilities and complex behaviors. The locomotive behaviors can consist of a variety of walking patterns along with adaptation that allow…
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…
Flapping insects are remarkably agile fliers, adapted to a highly turbulent environment. We present a series of high resolution numerical simulations of a bumblebee interacting with turbulent inflow. We consider both tethered and free…
This expository review is devoted to fish swimming and bird/insect flight. (i) The simple waving motion of an elongated flexible ribbon plate of constant width, immersed in a fluid at rest, propagating a wave distally down the plate to swim…
Using a flapping robot in a wind tunnel, we show that flapping faster amplifies existing longitudinal static stability (focusing on the pitch stiffness) and can even make an unstable flier stable. We show that stability for a flapper is not…
The dipteran flight mechanism of the insects is commonly used to design the nonlinear flight robot system. However, the dynamic response of the click mechanism of the nonlinear robot system with multiple stability still unclear. In this…
The aerial flocking of birds, or murmurations, has fascinated observers while presenting many challenges to behavioral study and simulation. We examine how the periphery of murmurations remain well bounded and cohesive. We also investigate…
The wings in different insect species are morphologically distinct with regards to their size, outer contour (margin) shape, venation, and pigmentation. The basis of the diversity of wing margin shapes remains unknown, despite the fact that…
The extraordinary aerial agility of hummingbirds and insects continues to inspire the design of flapping-wing drones. To replicate and analyze such flight, computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations that couple flow solvers with rigid…
We employ a novel computational modeling framework to perform high-fidelity direct numerical simulations of aero-structural interactions in bat-inspired membrane wings. The wing of a bat consists of an elastic membrane supported by a highly…
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…
Insects have long been recognized for their ability to navigate and return home using visual cues from their nest's environment. However, the precise mechanism underlying this remarkable homing skill remains a subject of ongoing…
Spatial single-loop mechanisms such as Bennett linkages offer a unique combination of one-degree-of-freedom actuation and nontrivial spatial trajectories, making them attractive for lightweight bio-inspired robotic design. However, although…
Self-folding origami, structures that are engineered flat to fold into targeted, three-dimensional shapes, have many potential engineering applications. Though significant effort in recent years has been devoted to designing fold patterns…
Robots excel at avoiding obstacles but struggle to traverse complex 3-D terrain with cluttered large obstacles. By contrast, insects like cockroaches excel at doing so. Recent research in our lab elucidated how locomotor transitions emerge…
Aerodynamic ground effect in flapping-wing insect flight is of importance to comparative morphologies and of interest to the micro-air-vehicle (MAV) community. Recent studies, however, show apparently contradictory results of either some…
Tiltrotors are an aircraft concept with the ability to rotate their rotors freely, achieving vertical take-off and fast forward flight. The combination of helicopter and fixed-wing flight into one aircraft provides versatility in mission…
Biological flapping wing fliers operate efficiently and robustly in a wide range of flight conditions and are a great source of inspiration to engineers. The unsteady aerodynamics of flapping-wings are dominated by large-scale vortical…
Insect flight motors are extraordinary natural structures that operate efficiently at high frequencies. Structural resonance is thought to play a role in ensuring efficient motor operation, but the details of this role are elusive. While…
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…