Development of an impulsive motion generator inspired by cocking slip joint of snapping shrimp
We propose an impulsive motion generator inspired by snapping shrimp. The proposed device mimics the geometrical arrangement of a unique claw joint called cocking slip joint and integrates it with an artificial rack-pinion actuator mechanism rather than adopting the musculoskeletal system as it is. The design approach allows the proposed device to reproduce the impulsive slip motion through the torque reversal and unlatching mechanism of the underlying unique joint by using a single servo motor. Static and dynamic analyses revealed that the actuator force required to store and release elastic energy was remarkably small co...
Source: Bioinspiration and Biomimetics - September 12, 2023 Category: Science Authors: Kiichi Tajima, Keisuke Yagi and Yoshikazu Mori Source Type: research
The role of leading-edge serrations in controlling the flow over owls ’ wing
We studied the effects of leading-edge serrations on the flow dynamics developed over an owl wing model. Owls are predatory birds. Most owl species are nocturnal, with some active during the day. The nocturnal ones feature stealth capabilities that are partially attributed to their wing microfeatures. One of these microfeatures is small rigid combs (i.e. serrations) aligned at an angle with respect to the incoming flow located at the wings ’ leading-edge region of the primaries. These serrations are essentially passive flow control devices that enhance some of the owls’ flight characteristics, such as aeroacoustics and...
Source: Bioinspiration and Biomimetics - September 11, 2023 Category: Science Authors: Tanner Saussaman, Asif Nafi, David Charland, Hadar Ben-Gida and Roi Gurka Source Type: research
Multi-constraint spatial coupling for the body joint quadruped robot and the CPG control method on rough terrain
Quadruped robots have frequently appeared in various situations, including wilderness rescue, planetary exploration, and nuclear power facility maintenance. The quadruped robot with an active body joint has better environmental adaptability than one without body joints. However, it is difficult to guarantee the stability of the body joint quadruped robot when walking on rough terrain. Given the above issues, this paper proposed a gait control method for the body joint quadruped robot based on multi-constraint spatial coupling (MCSC) algorithm. The body workspace of the robot is divided into three subspaces, which are solve...
Source: Bioinspiration and Biomimetics - September 3, 2023 Category: Science Authors: Guozheng Song, Qinglin Ai, Hangsheng Tong, Jian Xu and Shaoxuan Zhu Source Type: research
Biomimetic models of fish gill rakers as lateral displacement arrays for particle separation
Ram suspension-feeding fish, such as herring, use gill rakers to separate small food particles from large water volumes while swimming forward with an open mouth. The fish gill raker function was tested using 3D-printed conical models and computational fluid dynamics simulations over a range of slot aspect ratios. Our hypothesis predicting the exit of particles based on mass flow rates, dividing streamlines (i.e. stagnation streamlines) at the slots between gill rakers, and particle size was supported by the results of experiments with physical models in a recirculating flume. Particle movement in suspension-feeding fish g...
Source: Bioinspiration and Biomimetics - August 30, 2023 Category: Science Authors: Erin M Witkop, Sam Van Wassenbergh, Paul D Heideman and S Laurie Sanderson Source Type: research
Active wing-pitching mechanism in hummingbird escape maneuvers
Previous studies suggested that wing pitching, i.e. the wing rotation around its long axis, of insects and hummingbirds is primarily driven by an inertial effect associated with stroke deceleration and acceleration of the wings and is thus passive. Here we considered the rapid escape maneuver of hummingbirds who were initially hovering but then startled by the frontal approach of a looming object. During the maneuver, the hummingbirds substantially changed their wingbeat frequency, wing trajectory, and other kinematic parameters. Using wing kinematics reconstructed from high-speed videos and computational fluid dynamics mo...
Source: Bioinspiration and Biomimetics - August 28, 2023 Category: Science Authors: Mohammad Nasirul Haque, Bo Cheng, Bret W Tobalske and Haoxiang Luo Source Type: research
On the influence of head motion on the swimming kinematics of robotic fish
Up to now bio-inspired fish-mimicking robots fail when competing with the swimming performance of real fish. While tail motion has been studied extensively, the influence of the head motion is still not fully understood and its active control is challenging. In this experimental study, we show that head yawing strongly impacts on the propulsion force and determines the optimal fin actuation amplitude and tail beat frequency when aiming for a maximal propulsion force. In a parametric experimental study on a tethered 367 mm long fish robot the pivot point location of the head yaw has been varied along with tail beat frequenc...
Source: Bioinspiration and Biomimetics - August 28, 2023 Category: Science Authors: Shokoofeh Abbaszadeh, Yanneck Kiiski, Roberto Leidhold and Stefan Hoerner Source Type: research
Compact and ordered swarms of unmanned aerial vehicles in cluttered environments
The globally coordinated motion produced by the classical swarm model is typically generated by simple local interactions at the individual level. Despite the success of these models in interpretation, they cannot guarantee compact and ordered collective motion when applied to the cooperation of unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) swarms in cluttered environments. Inspired by the behavioral characteristics of biological swarms, a distributed self-organized Reynolds (SOR) swarm model of UAVs is proposed. In this model, a social term is designed to keep the swarm in a collision-free, compact, and ordered collective motion, an obst...
Source: Bioinspiration and Biomimetics - August 20, 2023 Category: Science Authors: Hui Xiong, Yaozu Ding and Jinzhen Liu Source Type: research
Investigation of bionic composite laminates inspired by the natural impact-resistant helicoidal structure in the mandibles of trap-jaw ants
Many living organisms exhibit exceptional capabilities and have evolved effective strategies to synthesize impact-resistant and damage-tolerant structures. One such example can be observed in the rapid mandible strikes of Odontomachus monticola, a species of trap-jaw ants from the ponerine subfamily. During trap-jaw strikes, the mandibles can achieve peak speeds of 35.42 m s −1, and the maximum acceleration can reach 71 729 g within an average duration of 0.18 ms. The extreme acceleration results in instantaneous mandible strike forces that can exceed 330 times the ant’s body weight, withstanding thousands of impacts...
Source: Bioinspiration and Biomimetics - August 13, 2023 Category: Science Authors: Shicai Zhao, Deyuan Zhang, Yupu Yan and Xiaoming Yin Source Type: research
Review of the applications of principles of insect hearing to microscale acoustic engineering challenges
When looking for novel, simple, and energy-efficient solutions to engineering problems, nature has proved to be an incredibly valuable source of inspiration. The development of acoustic sensors has been a prolific field for bioinspired solutions. With a diverse array of evolutionary approaches to the problem of hearing at small scales (some widely different to the traditional concept of ‘ear’), insects in particular have served as a starting point for several designs. From locusts to moths, through crickets and mosquitoes among many others, the mechanisms found in nature to deal with small-scale acoustic detection and ...
Source: Bioinspiration and Biomimetics - August 13, 2023 Category: Science Authors: Lara D íaz-García, Brendan Latham, Andrew Reid and James Windmill Source Type: research
Direction-of-arrival estimation for acoustic signals based on direction-dependent parameter tuning of a bioinspired binaural coupling system
Bioinspired methods for sound source localization offer opportunities for resource reduction as well as concurrent performance improvement in contrast to conventional techniques. Usually, sound source localization requires a large number of microphones arranged in irregular geometries, and thus has high resource requirements in terms of space and data processing. Motivated by biology and using digital signal processing methods, an approach that adapts the coupled hearing system of the fly Ormia ochracea with a minimally distant two-microphone array is presented. Despite its physiology, the fly is able to overcome physical ...
Source: Bioinspiration and Biomimetics - August 9, 2023 Category: Science Authors: Philipp J ünemann, Axel Schneider and Joachim Waßmuth Source Type: research
Wing kinematics measurement and aerodynamics of hovering droneflies with wing damage
In this study, we performed successive unilateral and bilateral wing shearing to simulate wing damage in droneflies (Eristalis tenax) and measured the wing kinematics using high-speed photography technology. Two different shearing types were considered in the artificial wing damage. The aerodynamic force and power consumption were obtained by numerical method. Our major findings are the following. Different shearing methods have little influence on the kinematics, forces and energy consumption of insects. Following wing damage, among the potential strategies to adjust the three Euler angles of the wing, adjusting stroke an...
Source: Bioinspiration and Biomimetics - February 23, 2023 Category: Science Authors: Xueguang Meng, Xinyu Liu, Zengshuang Chen, Jianghao Wu and Gang Chen Source Type: research
Porous polymeric microparticles foamed with supercritical CO2 as scattering white pigments
Nowadays, titanium dioxide (TiO2) is the most commercially relevant white pigment. Nonetheless, it is widely criticized due to its energy-intensive extraction and costly disposal of harmful by-products. Furthermore, recent studies discuss its potential harm for the environment and the human health. Environment-friendly strategies for the replacement of TiO2 as a white pigment can be inspired from nature. Here whiteness often originates from broadband light scattering air cavities embedded in materials with refractive indices much lower than that of TiO2. Such natural prototypes can be mimicked by introducing air-filled nan...
Source: Bioinspiration and Biomimetics - February 23, 2023 Category: Science Authors: Luisa Maren Borgmann, Siegbert Johnsen, Cristine Santos de Oliveira, Juliana Martins de Souza e Silva, Juan Li, Christoph Kirchlechner, Guillaume Gomard, Gabriele Wiegand and Hendrik H ölscher Source Type: research
Towards Living Machines: current and future trends of tactile sensing, grasping, and social robotics
The development of future technologies can be highly influenced by our deeper understanding of the principles that underlie living organisms. The Living Machines conference aims at presenting (among others) the interdisciplinary work of behaving systems based on such principles. Celebrating the 10 years of the conference, we present the progress and future challenges of some of the key themes presented in the robotics workshop of the Living Machines conference. More specifically, in this perspective paper, we focus on the advances in the field of biomimetics and robotics for the creation o f artificial systems that can ...
Source: Bioinspiration and Biomimetics - February 23, 2023 Category: Science Authors: Vasiliki Vouloutsi, Lorenzo Cominelli, Mehmet Dogar, Nathan Lepora, Claudio Zito and Uriel Martinez-Hernandez Source Type: research
A monocular wide-field speed sensor inspired by the crabs ’ visual system for traffic analysis
The development of visual sensors for traffic analysis can benefit from mimicking two fundamental aspects of the visual system of crabs: their panoramic vision and their visual processing strategy adapted to a flat world. First, the use of omnidirectional cameras in urban environments allows for analyzing the simultaneous movement of many objects of interest over broad areas. This would reduce the costs and complications associated with infrastructure: installation, synchronization, maintenance, and operation of traditional vision systems that use multiple cameras with a limited field of view. Second, in urban traffic anal...
Source: Bioinspiration and Biomimetics - February 23, 2023 Category: Science Authors: Hern án D Guimaraynz, Sebastián I Arroyo, Santiago A Ibáñez and Damián E Oliva Source Type: research
The effect of dynamic twisting on the flow field and the unsteady forces of a heaving flat plate
Many marine animals can dynamically twist their pectoral fins while swimming. The effects of such dynamic twisting on the unsteady forces on the fin and its surrounding flow field are yet to be understood in detail. In this paper, a flat plate executing a heaving maneuver is subjected to a similar dynamic twisting. In particular, the effects of the direction of twist, non-dimensional heaving amplitude, and reduced frequency are studied using a force sensor and particle image velocimetry (PIV) measurements. Two reduced frequencies, , and , and two twisting modes are investigated. In the first twisting mode, the plate is twi...
Source: Bioinspiration and Biomimetics - February 15, 2023 Category: Science Authors: Carlos Soto and Samik Bhattacharya Source Type: research
