Data:
– Researchers have used tiny flapping robots to understand how insects evolved the ability to rapidly flap their wings.
– Some insects, like mosquitoes, flap their wings in an “asynchronous” manner, with additional contract-relax cycles that are not controlled by brain signals.
– Simon Sponberg and his colleagues at the Georgia Institute of Technology studied the evolutionary history of asynchronous flight using data on how many insects are capable of this behavior.
– Computer simulations showed that asynchronous flight evolved only once in 87% of possible evolutionary scenarios, challenging the previous assumption that it evolved independently in different insect groups.
– The researchers focused on the tobacco hawk moth (Manduca sexta), which is capable of asynchronous flight to a lesser extent.
– The hawk moth’s flight muscles have a stronger impulse to contract in response to brain signals, which hinders its ability to switch to an automatic contraction cycle.
– Inspired by this, the researchers created a robot capable of switching between the two types of flight by tuning its flapping mechanisms to mimic the hawk moth’s muscle properties.
– The robot, called “roboflapper,” is the first to fly asynchronously using self-excited artificial muscles.
– This discovery challenges the assumption that switching between the two types of flight is difficult, suggesting that it is more like tuning an engine for different applications.
– The study may provide useful information for engineers building flying robots, according to Robert Dudley at the University of California, Berkeley. However, he suggests cross-referencing the evolutionary model with measurements of wing flapping frequencies from insects in the field to further strengthen the findings.
