Meeting Abstract

21.2  Sunday, Jan. 4  Dynamics and control of turning during saccades in fruitfly drosophila CHENG, Bo*; FRY, Steven; HUANG, Qingfeng; DICKSON, Will; DICKINSON, Michael; DENG, Xinyan; University of Delaware; ETH/University of Zurich, Switzerland; University of Delaware; California Institute of Technology; California Institute of Technology; University of Delaware deng@udel.edu

By analyzing the wing and body kinematics of free flying fruitfly drosophila during rapid maneuvers, we investigate the role of inertia and damping during saccade of insect flight. During turning, the body angular velocity induced passive aerodynamic damping is indentified both in simulation through quasi-steady state aerodynamic model and through experiments on a dynamically scaled robotic wing. In the turning yaw axis, the estimated damping coefficient on the wing induced by body turning velocity is greater than the value estimated previously on body frictional damping alone. This indicates the passive decelerating at the end of the saccade, while active stabilizing attempts for body posture is also identified. By simulating insect to rotate at six principle axes of inertial and body frames, linearized damping coefficient matrices are calculated. The result reveals the passive stability for flapping flight and can be critical in flight control either during body saccade or stabilizing movement of fruit fly.