Related papers: Upstroke wing clapping in bats and bat-inspired ro…
The 3D flight control of a flapping wing robot is a very challenging problem. The robot stabilizes and controls its pose through the aerodynamic forces acting on the wing membrane which has complex dynamics and it is difficult to develop a…
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…
Flapping wings enable flying animals and biomimetic robots to generate elevated aerodynamic forces. Measurements that demonstrate this capability are based on tethered experiments with robots and animals, and indirect force calculations…
Flapping wing flight is a challenging dynamical problem and is also a very fascinating subject to study in the field of biomimetic robotics. A Bat, in particular, has a very articulated armwing mechanism with high degrees-of-freedom and…
Insect-scale micro-aerial vehicles, especially lightweight, flapping-wing robots, are becoming increasingly important for safe motion sensing in spatially constrained environments such as living spaces. However, yaw control using flapping…
Compared with fixed-wing flight, flapping flight can generate a higher lift and is also more maneuverable, largely resulting from the benefits of wing rotation. By analyzing the real wing kinematics of fruit flies, we found that the wing…
Flying animals, such as bats, fly through their fluidic environment as they create air jets and form wake structures downstream of their flight path. Bats, in particular, dynamically morph their highly flexible and dexterous armwing to…
Flying animals resort to fast, large-degree-of-freedom motion of flapping wings, a key feature that distinguishes them from rotary or fixed-winged robotic fliers with limited motion of aerodynamic surfaces. However, flapping-wing…
Wing flexibility governs the flying performance of flapping wing flyers. Here, we use a self-propelled flapping-wing model mounted on a ``merry go round'' to investigate the effect of wing compliance on the propulsive efficiency of the…
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…
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…
Birds, bats and many insects can tuck their wings against their bodies at rest and deploy them to power flight. Whereas birds and bats use well-developed pectoral and wing muscles and tendons, how insects control these movements remains…
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…
Hummingbirds and insects achieve outstanding flight performance by adapting their flapping motion to the flight requirements. Their wing kinematics can change from smooth flapping to highly dynamic waveforms, generating unsteady aerodynamic…
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 effect of air viscosity on the flow around an insect wing increases as insect size decreases. For the smallest insects (wing length R below 1 mm), the viscous effect is so large that lift-generation mechanisms used by their larger…
Tried-and-true flapping wing robot simulation is essential in developing flapping wing mechanisms and algorithms. This paper presents a novel application-oriented flapping wing platform, highly compatible with various mechanical designs and…
In flapping flight, motion of the wings through the air generates the majority of the force and torque that controls the body motion. On the other hand, it is not clear how much effect the body motion imposes on the wings. We investigated…
The flight characteristics of bats remarkably have been overlooked in aerial drone designs. Unlike other animals, bats leverage the manipulation of inertial dynamics to exhibit aerial flip turns when they perch. Inspired by this unique…
Flying animals possess highly complex physical characteristics and are capable of performing agile maneuvers using their wings. The flapping wings generate complex wake structures that influence the aerodynamic forces, which can be…