This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5).
This project will study the sources and explore underlying principles for maneuverability and stability in flying animals, especially how they respond to unexpected environmental perturbations such as a gust of wind. Flying animals are quite maneuverable but also unexpectedly stable given their small size, they resist disruption of their flight better than a flying vehicle of similar size, but the sources of their capabilities are not well understood. Thus, studying how animals manage their own flight maneuverability and stability may lead to improvements in human designed flying machines. This study will also lead to a better understand what sort of 'software', sensory systems and reflexes must have evolved to allow animals to take to the air, and what sorts of capabilities animals in different ecological niches have for maneuverability and stability.
These topics will be investigated in a lab setting using the hawkmoth Manduca sexta as a model organism. Manduca is one of the largest flying insects, about the size of a hummingbird. It is also capable of steady hovering flight much like a hummingbird, and this behavior will be the basis for the experiments. A moth will be induced to hover, then perturbed by a gust of wind or a tug on a string attached to the moth and its response captured in slow motion by several high-speed video cameras. The response will then be analyzed and 'played back' in computer simulations of flapping flight, measuring 1) the moth's overall capability to respond to perturbations of different magnitude and 2) the aerodynamic sources of the response. These are expected to show that the moths use a passive mechanism previously discovered by the PI to respond to yaw turn perturbations, but respond actively and immediately (in the next flap) to perturbations in pitch. These responses are expected to take the form of a change in wing flapping motion to keep wing motion aligned mostly perpendicular to gravity regardless of the moth's body orientation.
