We use a factorial experimental design to test whether rearing at colder temperatures shifts the lower thermal envelope for flight of Drosophila melanogaster Meigen to colder temperatures. D. melanogaster that developed in colder temperatures (15 degrees C) had a significant flight advantage in cold air compared to flies that developed in warmer temperatures (28 degrees C). At 14 degrees C, col...

In this study, we have investigated how enhanced total flight force production compromises steering performance in tethered flying fruit flies, Drosophila melanogaster. The animals were flown in a closed-loop virtual-reality flight arena in which they modulated total flight force production in response to vertically oscillating visual patterns. By simultaneously measuring stroke amplitude and s...

In this work, we focus on the design and implementation of a robust flight control system for an unmanned helicopter. A comprehensive nonlinear model for an unmanned helicopter system, which is built by our research team at the National University of Singapore, is first presented. A three-layer control architecture is then adopted to construct an automatic flight control system for the aircraft...

This paper presents an overview of various intelligent control technologies currently being developed and studied under the Intelligent Flight Control (IFC) program at the NASA Ames Research Center. The main objective of the intelligent flight control program is to develop the next generation of flight controllers for the purpose of automatically compensating for a broad spectrum of damaged or ...

New technological developments in space engineering and science require sophisticated control systems with both high performance and reliability. How to achieve these goals against various uncertainties and off-nominal scenarios has been a very challenging issue for control system design over the last years. Several efforts have been spent on control systems design in aerospace applications, in...

The accurate determination of the speed of a propagating disturbance is important for a number of applications. A nonstationary cross-spectral density phase technique was developed to provide a statistical estimation for the propagation time, and was applied to a shock and a detonation wave. The results show that by including an envelope signal, the technique is an improvement over the traditio...

The safety and operational flight envelope of helicopters carrying externally slung loads, as illustrated in Figure 1, in support of regular Army/Special Air Service (SAS) operations, is limited and sometimes seriously hindered by stability and control problems. Several incidences have been reported by the Australian Army in which possible aerodynamic excitation or dynamic instability of the sl...