Article Synopsis
- Insects are highly skilled flyers, but studying their flight control can be challenging using traditional methods like animal experiments or tethered robots.
- Researchers created a programmable, agile robot with flapping wings that can replicate the quick escape maneuvers of fruit flies, despite being significantly larger in size.
- The robot's design reveals that certain aerial maneuvers, like yaw rotations, are influenced by aerodynamic forces, providing new ways to study animal flight for practical applications.
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Article Abstract
Insects are among the most agile natural flyers. Hypotheses on their flight control cannot always be validated by experiments with animals or tethered robots. To this end, we developed a programmable and agile autonomous free-flying robot controlled through bio-inspired motion changes of its flapping wings. Despite being 55 times the size of a fruit fly, the robot can accurately mimic the rapid escape maneuvers of flies, including a correcting yaw rotation toward the escape heading. Because the robot's yaw control was turned off, we showed that these yaw rotations result from passive, translation-induced aerodynamic coupling between the yaw torque and the roll and pitch torques produced throughout the maneuver. The robot enables new methods for studying animal flight, and its flight characteristics allow for real-world flight missions.
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| http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.aat0350 | DOI Listing |