Flexibility Effects of a Flapping Mechanism Inspired by Insect Musculoskeletal System on Flight Performance

Energy consumption during insect flight and bioinspiration for MAV design: A review

The excellent biological characteristics of insects provide an important source of inspiration for designing micro air vehicles (MAVs). Insect flight is an incredibly complex and energy-intensive process. Unique insect flight muscles and contraction mechanisms enable flapping at high frequencies. Moreover, the metabolic rate during flight can reach hundreds of times the resting state. Understanding energy consumption during flight is crucial for designing efficient biomimetic aircraft. This paper summarizes the structures and contraction mechanisms of insect flight muscles, explores the underlying metabolic processes, and identifies methods for energy substrate identification and detection, and discusses inspiration for biomimetic MAV design. This paper reviews energy consumption during insect flight, promotes the understanding of insect bioenergetics, and applies this information to the design of MAVs.

Biomimetic Soft Wings for Soft Robot Science

Flight and swimming in nature can inspire the design of highly adaptive robots capable of working in complex environments. In this letter, we reviewed our work on robotic propulsion in the air and water, with a specific focus on the crucial functions of elastic components involved in the driving mechanism and flapping wings. Elasticity in the driving mechanism inspired by birds and insects can enhance both the aerodynamic efficiency of flapping wings and robustness against disturbances with appropriate design. A flapping wing surface with a stiffness distribution inspired by hummingbirds was fabricated by combining tapered spars and ribs with a thin film. The biomimetic flexible wing could generate more lift than the nontapered wing with a similar amount of power consumption. Underwater flapping-wing propulsion inspired by penguins was investigated by combining the 3-degree-of-freedom (DoF) flapping mechanism and hydrodynamic calculation, which indicates that wing bending increases the propulsion efficiency. This work demonstrates the importance of passive deformation of both wing surfaces and driving mechanisms for improving the fluid dynamic efficiency and robustness in flight and swimming, as well as providing biological insight from an engineering perspective.

Kinematics and Aerodynamics of Dragonflies (Pantala flavescens, Libellulidae) in Climbing Flight

This study presents a detailed analysis of dragonflies’ climbing flight by integratinghigh-speed photogrammetry, three-dimensional reconstruction, and computational fluid dynamics. In this study, a dragonfly’s climbing flight is captured by two high-speed cameras with orthogonal optical axes. Through feature point matching and three-dimensional reconstruction, the body kinematics and wing kinematics of 22 dragonflies in climbing flight are accurately captured. Experimental results show that the climbing angles (η) are distributed from 10° to 80° and are concentrated within two ranges, 60°–70° (36%) and 20°–30° (32%), which are defined as large angle climb (LAC) and small angle climb (SAC), respectively. In order to study the aerodynamic mechanism of the climbing flight based on the biological observation results, the kinematic parameters of the dragonfly during LAC and SAC are selected for analysis and numerical simulation. The results show that the climbing angle η and wing kinematics are related. There are considerable differences in wing kinematics during climbing with different η, while the wing kinematics are unchanged during climbing with similar η. With the increase in η, the phase difference (λ) between the forewing and the hind wing decreases and the amplitude of the positional angle (θ_mean) of the hind wing increases, while θ_mean of the forewing remains almost unchanged. Through numerical simulation of LAC and SAC, it can be found that during the climb with different η, the different wing kinematics have a significant influence on aerodynamic performance. During SAC, the increase in λ and the decrease in θ_mean of the hind wing weaken the aerodynamic disturbance of the forewing by the vortex wing of the hind wing, thus improving the flight efficiency.