Related papers: Using Drag to Hover
Diversity and specialization of behavior in insects is unmatched. Insects hop, walk, run, jump, row, swim, glide and fly to propel themselves in a variety of environments. We have uncovered an unusual mode of propulsion of aerodynamic…
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…
A hover-capable insect-inspired flying robot that can remain long in the air has shown its potential use for both confined indoor and outdoor applications to complete assigned tasks. In this letter, we report improvements in the flight…
The wing structure of several insects, including dragonflies, is not smooth, but corrugated; its vertical cross-section consists of a connected series of line segments. Some previous studies have reported that corrugated wings exhibit…
Fluid dynamics, and flight in particular, is a domain where organisms challenge our understanding of its physics. Integrating the current knowledge of animal flight, we propose to revisit the use of live animals to study physical phenomena.…
Aerial insects can effortlessly navigate dense vegetation, whereas similarly sized aerial robots typically depend on offboard sensors and computation to maintain stable flight. This disparity restricts insect-scale robots to operation…
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…
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…
Stationary take-off, without a running start or elevated descent, requires substantial aerodynamic forces to overcome weight, particularly for large birds such as geese exceeding 2 kg. However, the complex wing motion and…
Individuals traversing challenging obstacles are faced with a decision: they can adopt traversal strategies that minimally disrupt their normal locomotion patterns or they can adopt strategies that substantially alter their gait, conferring…
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.…
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…
"Cicada: a Heavy but Agile Flyer" is a fluid dynamic video submitted to Gallery of Fluid Motion in APS-DFD 2011. Comparing to other insects, cicadas can generate much higher lift to overcome their large body weight. The hidden mechanism may…
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…
Flight is a complicated task at small scales in part due to the ubiquitous unsteady air which contains it. Flying organisms deal with these difficulties using active and passive control mechanisms to steer their body motion. Body attitudes…
In this paper, we present a full dynamical model of a four-winged micro ornithopter inspired by a dragonfly-type insect. The micro ornithopter is modeled as four articulated rigid body components (wings) connected to the main body via…
Gliding saves much energy, and to make large distances using only this form of flight represents a great challenge for both birds and people. The solution is to make use of the so-called thermals, which are localized, warmer regions in the…
We explore the rotational stability of hovering flight. Our model is motivated by an experimental pyramid-shaped object and a computational lambda-shaped analog hovering passively in oscillating airflows; both systems have been shown to…
Flying snakes use a unique method of aerial locomotion: they jump from tree branches, flatten their bodies and undulate through the air to produce a glide. The shape of their body cross-section during the glide plays an important role in…
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…