High-Speed Video of Locusts Could Help Make Better Flying Robots

A new study may inspire aeronautical engineers to be more "flexible" with their designs. The study shows that the bends and twists in locusts’ flexible, flapping wings power the insects’ extraordinary long-distance flights.

Even though researchers have been studying how insects and other creatures fly for a long time, the aerodynamics and architectures of wings is still not fully understood. The new work uncovers the flight signatures of flapping, flexible wings.

The research focuses on the flight of the pestilent locust, an insect renowned for its efficient flying style. The four-winged insects are built to fly hundreds of miles at a time.

Researchers used high-speed cameras to capture the details of how wings of the locust Schistocerca gregaria deform as they flap by bending and twisting.

Data from the high-resolution flight images allowed the researchers to create a near-perfect mathematical model of how the flexible, twisting wings propel the insect through the air. With the model in hand, they could predict the shapes of the air currents around the flying locusts. Tiny packets of smoke released near a flying locust showed air swirls similar to swirls predicted by the model. Tweaks to to the model indicated that stiffening and/or straightening the wings caused flight performance to suffer.

The study provides sound experimental evidence that flexible wings add to flight performance. Figuring out the details of how locusts and other insects fly may help researchers design tiny robotic fliers (or "micro air vehicles").

The picture below shows patterns of air movement caused by a flying locust (middle and right columns) are similar to air patterns predicted by a computer simulation (left column). Air swirls beneath the locust’s wings as the wings move downward from the beginning of a stroke (top panels) to the end (bottom panels).



Original article here.