Related papers: Advancing flight physics through natural adaptatio…
The climate system is a forced, dissipative, nonlinear, complex and heterogeneous system that is out of thermodynamic equilibrium. The system exhibits natural variability on many scales of motion, in time as well as space, and it is subject…
Existing research has yet to reach a consensus on whether and how small flying animals utilize elastic energy storage mechanisms to reduce flight energy expenditure, and there is a lack of systematic and universal methods for assessment. To…
Collective locomotion of swimming and flying animals is fascinating in terms of individual-level fluid mechanics and group-level structure and dynamics. Here we bridge and relate these scales through a model of formation flight that views…
The field of fluid mechanics is rapidly advancing, driven by unprecedented volumes of data from field measurements, experiments and large-scale simulations at multiple spatiotemporal scales. Machine learning offers a wealth of techniques to…
We consider flocks of artificial birds and study the emergence of V-like formations during flight. We introduce a small set of fully distributed positioning rules to guide the birds' movements and demonstrate, by means of simulations, that…
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,…
Many aspects of the study of protein folding and dynamics have been affected by the recent advances in machine learning. Methods for the prediction of protein structures from their sequences are now heavily based on machine learning tools.…
One of the most highly debated questions in the field of animal swarming and social behaviour, is the collective random patterns and chaotic behaviour formed by some animal species, in particular if there is a danger. Is such a behaviour…
This study explores the impact of feathers on the hydrodynamic drag experienced by diving birds, which is critical to their foraging efficiency and survival. Employing a novel experimental approach, we analyzed the kinematics of both…
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…
We present here the results of an analysis carried out by biologists and roboticists with the aim of modeling bird locomotion kinematics for robotics purposes. The aim was to develop a bio-inspired kinematic model of the bird leg from…
A large number of insect species feed primarily on a fluid diet. To do so, they must overcome the numerous challenges that arise in the design of high-efficiency, miniature pumps. Although the morphology of insect feeding structures has…
Realtime model learning proves challenging for complex dynamical systems, such as drones flying in variable wind conditions. Machine learning technique such as deep neural networks have high representation power but is often too slow to…
Recent research has extended methods from the fields of thermodynamics and statistical mechanics into other disciplines. Most notably, one recent work creates a unified theoretical framework to understand evolutionary biology, machine…
Soft robotics has opened a unique path to flexibility and environmental adaptability, learning from nature and reproducing biological behaviors. Nature implies answers for how to apply robots to real life. To find out how we learn from…
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…
This work developed a meta-learning approach that adapts the control policy on the fly to different changing conditions for robust locomotion. The proposed method constantly updates the interaction model, samples feasible sequences of…
Learning the dynamics of robots from data can help achieve more accurate tracking controllers, or aid their navigation algorithms. However, when the actual dynamics of the robots change due to external conditions, on-line adaptation of…
Wing flexibility plays an essential role in the aerodynamic performance of insects due to the considerable deformation of their wings during flight under the impact of inertial and aerodynamic forces. These forces come from the complex wing…
The capacity for aerial maneuvering shaped the evolution of flying animals. Here we evaluate consequences of aviaian morphology for aerial performance (1,2) by quantifying static stability and control effectiveness of physical models (3)…