Attitude control is an essential flight capability. Whereas flying robots commonly rely on accelerometers for estimating attitude, flying insects lack an unambiguous sense of gravity. Despite the established role of several sense organs in attitude s...
Tiny "gnat robots," weighing just a few milligrams, were first conjectured in the 1980s. How to stabilize one if it were to hover like a small insect has not been answered. Challenges include the requirement that sensors be both low mass and high ban...
Traditional flapping-wing robots (FWRs) obtain lift and thrust by relying on the passive deformation of their wings which cannot actively fold or deform. In contrast, flying creatures such as birds, bats, and insects can maneuver agilely through acti...
Flight control such as stable hovering and trajectory tracking of tailless flapping-wing micro aerial vehicles is a challenging task. Given the constraint on actuation capability, flight control authority is limited beyond sufficient lift generation....
Recent work shows that the developmental potential of progenitor cells in the HH10 chick brain changes rapidly, accompanied by subtle changes in morphology. This demands increased temporal resolution for studies of the brain at this stage, necessitat...
One of the most challenging aspects of bee ecology and conservation is species-level identification, which is costly, time consuming, and requires taxonomic expertise. Recent advances in the application of deep learning and computer vision have shown...
Enhancing the aerodynamic performance of bristled wings is an important topic for small flying robotics. This paper numerically investigates this situation at very low Reynolds numbers by using elliptic cylinders as the bristles instead of circular c...
Bioinspired flapping-wing micro aerial vehicles (FWMAVs) have emerged over the last two decades as a promising new type of robot. Their high thrust-to-weight ratio, versatility, safety, and maneuverability, especially at small scales, could make them...
Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences
38652595
Studying the detailed biomechanics of flying animals requires accurate three-dimensional coordinates for key anatomical landmarks. Traditionally, this relies on manually digitizing animal videos, a labor-intensive task that scales poorly with increas...
Insects constitute the most species-rich radiation of metazoa, a success that is due to the evolution of active flight. Unlike pterosaurs, birds and bats, the wings of insects did not evolve from legs, but are novel structures that are attached to th...