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Drag-based swimming with rowing appendages, fins, and webbed feet is a widely adapted locomotion form in aquatic animals. To develop effective underwater and swimming vehicles, a wide range of bioinspired drag-based paddles have been…

Flying birds navigate effectively through crosswinds, even when wind speeds are as high as flight speeds. What information birds use to sense crosswinds and compensate is largely unknown. We found that lovebirds can navigate 45-degree…

V-shaped and echelon formations help migratory birds to consume less energy for migration. As the case study, the formation flight of the Northern Bald Ibises is considered to investigate different effects on their flight efficiency. The…

We study the role of unsteady lift in the context of flapping wings in birds' flight. Both aerodynamicists and biologists attempt to address this subject, yet it seems that the contribution of the unsteady lift still holds many open…

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…

In a recent computer study, we have shown that the combination of spatially heterogeneous dynamics and kinetic facilitation provides a microscopic explanation for the emergence of excess wings in deeply supercooled liquids. Motivated by…

Tracking a turbulent plume to locate its source is a complex control problem because it requires multi-sensory integration and must be robust to intermittent odors, changing wind direction, and variable plume statistics. This task is…

Dragonfly beats its wings independently, resulting in its superior maneuverability. Depending on the magnitude of phase difference between the fore- and hind-wings of dragonfly, the vortical structures and their interaction with wings…

Turbulence is omnipresent in the atmosphere and a long-standing scientific conundrum that makes flight complex. This complexity is little understood; surprisingly, when turbulence arises, air vehicles struggle while birds seem to thrive.…

Evolutionary Robotics allows robots with limited sensors and processing to tackle complex tasks by means of sensory-motor coordination. In this paper we show the first application of the Behaviour Tree framework to a real robotic platform…

Early olfactory pathway responses to the presentation of an odor exhibit remarkably similar dynamical behavior across phyla from insects to mammals, and frequently involve transitions among quiescence, collective network oscillations, and…

Natural fliers like bats exploit the complex fluid-structure interaction between their flexible membrane wings and the air with great ease. Yet, replicating and scaling the balance between the structural and fluid-dynamical parameters of…

While bio-inspired and biomimetic systems draw inspiration from living materials, biohybrid systems incorporate them with synthetic devices, allowing the exploitation of both organic and artificial advantages inside a single entity. In the…

The correlated motion of flocks is an instance of global order emerging from local interactions. An essential difference with analogous ferromagnetic systems is that flocks are active: animals move relative to each other, dynamically…

Multi-flagellated bacteria utilize the hydrodynamic interaction between their filamentary tails, known as flagella, to swim and change their swimming direction in low Reynolds number flow. This interaction, referred to as bundling and…

In our previous work, we studied an interconnected bursting neuron model for insect locomotion, and its corresponding phase oscillator model, which at high speed can generate stable tripod gaits with three legs off the ground simultaneously…

Turbulence grounds aircraft and combating it in flight requires energy, yet volant wildlife fly effortlessly even on windy days. The nature of the interactions between soaring birds and transient turbulent gusts is not clear, especially…

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…

Like a rocket being propelled into space, evolution has engineered flies to launch into adulthood via multiple stages. Flies develop and deploy two distinct bodies, linked by the transformative process of metamorphosis. The fly larva is a…

Birds rely on active high-acceleration morphing and flapping to navigate complex airflows, but they can also maintain stable fixed-wing postures under persistent atmospheric disturbances. Here, we show that avian wings exhibit aerodynamic…