Tuesday November 12
07:30 PM
Engineering and Reverse-Engineering Insect Flight
MCZ 101, 26 Oxford Street, Harvard University
Flapping flight is one of the key innovations which make insects the most successful group of animals on the planet, and it has captivated engineers who wish to build micro air vehicles capable of similar performance. In this broad-ranging presentation, Drs. Mountcastle and Fuller, both from Harvard University, will talk about their research on insect flight.
Dr. Mountcastle will talk about insect wing form and function. Insect wings are flexible structures that bend and twist in ways that are actually adaptive for a variety of functional demands. He will show how wing flexibility enhances load-lifting and aerodynamic force production in bumblebees, and also helps mitigate collision damage in the wings of wasps and bumblebees.
Dr. Fuller will talk about how these animals use their tiny, low resolution eyes to sense their motion and control flight, and how to build robots inspired by their control strategies. He will show how he and his colleagues control a Robobee, an insect-sized flapping-wing flying vehicle the sized of a bumblebee, using a small number of visual sensors. He will also talk about how flies control their forward velocity using both vision and wind sensing because vision alone is too slow. This research approach is what Sawyer calls “cyclic biological robotics” – studying biology for robotic inspiration, using this robotics to bring up refined questions for biology, and repeating.
The talk is free and open to the public. The meeting is readily accessible via public transportation. Parking is available in the Oxford Street Garage with advance arrangement, as described here, or (usually but not always) at spaces on nearby streets. Everyone is also welcome to join us for dinner before the talk (beginning at 6:00 PM) at the Cambridge Common.
CEC meetings are held the second Tuesday of the month from October through May. The evening schedule typically includes an informal dinner (6:00 to 7:15 PM) followed by our formal meeting (7:30 – 9:00 PM). The latter begins with club business and is followed by a 50 minute entomology related presentation. Membership is open to amateur and professional entomologists.
