The turning flight of six microchiropteran bat species is described. The bats' abilities to turn tightly were determined by their abilities to fly slowly and to generate high lateral accelerations. Rhinolophus ferrumequinum developed high lateral accelerations by flapping its banked wings while flying at very low speed. Plecotus auritus turned at relatively low speed and at low lateral accelera...

Recent studies suggest that fruit flies use subtle changes to their wing motion to actively generate forces during aerial maneuvers. In addition, it has been estimated that the passive rotational damping caused by the flapping wings of an insect is around two orders of magnitude greater than that for the body alone. At present, however, the relationships between the active regulation of wing ki...

In order to study the role of the passive deformation in the aerodynamics of insect wings, we computationally model the three-dimensional fluid–structure interaction of an elastic rectangular wing at a low aspect ratio during hovering flight. The code couples a viscous incompressible flow solver based on the immersedboundary method and a nonlinear finite-element solver for thin-walled structure...

The aerial environment in the operating domain of small-scale natural and artificial flapping wing fliers is highly complex, unsteady and generally turbulent. Considering flapping flight in an unsteady wind environment with a periodically varying lateral velocity component, we show that body rotations experienced by flapping wing fliers result in the reorientation of the aerodynamic force vecto...

Flapping-wing kinematics for insect flight has been studied for decades, especially since engineers became interested in flapping-wing micro air vehicles (FWMAVs). Previous work mainly focused on understanding kinematic patterns employed by different insects from the perspective of their trajectories and aerodynamics, and on optimization of kinematic parameters to enhance the understanding. How...

Control of ornithopters is challenging due to the unsteady flow generated by the flapping wings. The research presented in this paper is aimed at developing a sensor-based control methodology. Specifically, a distributed pressure sensing system embedded in the flapping wing surfaces is utilized to provide real-time aerodynamic force estimates to facilitate the development of feedback for an orn...

The aim of the article is the kinematic and geometric design of a flapping wing UAV, in order to develop an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle, capable of executing reconnaissance and video-surveillance missions. To define the characteristic dimensions of the vehicle a biological study was initially carried out, analyzing, for example, the weight-wingspan ratio for the correct kinematics of the flight. On...

Insect wings demonstrate elaborate three-dimensional deformations and kinematics. These deformations are key to understanding many aspects of insect flight including aerodynamics, structural dynamics and control. In this paper, we propose a template-based subdivision surface reconstruction method that is capable of reconstructing the wing deformations and kinematics of free-flying insects based...

This paper presented a click mechanism, which is inspired by a Dipteran insect, for use in flapping-wing micro aerial vehicle. The clicking mechanism is integrated in a thorax-like compliant mechanism, which buckles and consequently produces a large wing stroke when driven by an electric motor. The thorax-like compliant mechanism can store elastic energy in flexible hinges and is good for stori...

Flapping-wing robotic insects are small, highly maneuverable flying robots inspired by biologicalinsects and useful for a wide range of tasks, including exploration, environmental monitoring, searchand rescue, and surveillance. Recently, robotic insects driven by piezoelectric actuators have achievedthe important goal of taking off with external power; however, fully autonomous operation requir...