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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…
We analyze the diffusive transport of Brownian particles in narrow channels with periodically varying cross-section. The geometrical confinements lead to entropic barriers, the particle has to overcome in order to proceed in transport…
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…
We investigate the occupancy statistics of birds on a wire and on higher-dimensional substrates. In one dimension, birds land one by one on a wire and rest where they land. Whenever a newly arriving bird lands within a fixed distance of…
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…
Run-and-tumble is a common but vital strategy that bacteria employ to explore environment suffused with boundaries, as well as to escape from entrapment. In this study we reveal how this strategy and the resulting dynamical behavior can be…
High-resolution numerical simulations of a tethered model bumblebee in forward flight are performed superimposing homogeneous isotropic turbulent fluctuations to the uniform inflow. Despite tremendous variation in turbulence intensity,…
High resolution direct numerical simulations of rotating and flapping bumblebee wings are presented and their aerodynamics is studied focusing on the role of leading edge vortices and the associated helicity production. We first study the…
We characterize the computation of motion in the fly visual system as a mapping from the high dimensional space of signals in the retinal photodetector array to the probability of generating an action potential in a motion sensitive neuron.…
Stability of flapping flight, a natural requirement for flying insects, is one of the major challenges for designing micro aerial vehicles (MAVs). To better understand how a flying insect could stabilize itself during hover, we have…
Animals often forage via Levy walks stochastic trajectories with heavy tailed step lengths optimized for sparse resource environments. We show that human visual gaze follows similar dynamics when scanning images. While traditional models…
Insects as pollinators play a crucial role in ecosystem management and world food production. However, insect populations are declining, calling for efficient methods of insect monitoring. Existing methods analyze video or time-lapse images…
In the beeswax combs of honey bees, the cells of brood, pollen, and honey have a consistent spatial pattern that is sustained throughout the life of a colony. This spatial pattern is believed to emerge from simple behavioral rules that…
This research paper presents a novel approach for navigating a micro UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle) through narrow passages using only its onboard camera feed and a PID control system. The proposed method uses edge detection and homography…
Diverse processes--e.g. bioremediation, biofertilization, and microbial drug delivery--rely on bacterial migration in disordered, three-dimensional (3D) porous media. However, how pore-scale confinement alters bacterial motility is unknown…
The ability of a honeybee swarm to select the best nest site plays a fundamental role in determining the future colony's fitness. To date, the nest-site selection process has mostly been modelled and theoretically analysed for the case of…
From smoothly pursuing moving objects to rapidly shifting gazes during visual search, humans employ a wide variety of eye movement strategies in different contexts. While eye movements provide a rich window into mental processes, building…
The size of a narrow gap traversable by a fixed-wing drone is limited by its wingspan. Inspired by birds, here, we enable the traversal of a gap of sub-wingspan width and height using a morphing-wing drone capable of temporarily sweeping in…
Navigating through a visual maze relies on the strategic use of eye movements to select and identify the route. When navigating the maze, there are trade-offs between exploring to the environment and relying on memory. This study examined…
In natural environments, solid surfaces present both opportunities and challenges for bacteria. On one hand, they serve as platforms for biofilm formation, crucial for bacterial colonization and resilience in harsh conditions. On the other…