LG14064 - As the Wright brothers demonstrated one hundred years ago, the key challenge of flight is maintaining balance. Although insects took to the air 400 million years earlier, their flight stability remains a mystery because of the complex aerodynamics of flapping wings. We approach this problem by discovering the conditions needed to achieve stable hovering in mechanical flyers. Our system consists of pyramid-shaped bugs constructed from paper that hover when placed in an oscillating column of air, mimicking the effect of flapping wings. To our surprise, we find that top-heavy bugs hover stably: if the body tilts to the side, the swirls of fluid ejected from the wings automatically adjust to keep the bug upright. By providing this connection between wing shape and flow features, these findings offer a blueprint for achieving stability in highly maneuverable flapping-wing robots.
Thursday, February 2, 2012
Swirling airflow helps stabilize flapping-wing flyers
LG14064 - As the Wright brothers demonstrated one hundred years ago, the key challenge of flight is maintaining balance. Although insects took to the air 400 million years earlier, their flight stability remains a mystery because of the complex aerodynamics of flapping wings. We approach this problem by discovering the conditions needed to achieve stable hovering in mechanical flyers. Our system consists of pyramid-shaped bugs constructed from paper that hover when placed in an oscillating column of air, mimicking the effect of flapping wings. To our surprise, we find that top-heavy bugs hover stably: if the body tilts to the side, the swirls of fluid ejected from the wings automatically adjust to keep the bug upright. By providing this connection between wing shape and flow features, these findings offer a blueprint for achieving stability in highly maneuverable flapping-wing robots.
