Wednesday, October 07, 2009

Fruit Fly Flight

A fruit-friendly blog worth its fructose simply cannot pass up a new study on the angular flight capabilities of the fruit fly.
"Our model predicts, that flight muscles of flies can act over several wing beats to bias the pitch of the wings and yet generate the sub wing-beat changes in wing motion that aerodynamically induce the maneuver," say the [research team].
More explanation here. But what is the practical upshot?
Wang and co conclude: "The simple mechanism used by fruit flies may be quite general and should likewise simplify the control of flapping flying machines."
Kress will finally have his day.
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On a different front, keep up the struggle against other fruit abusers!

3 comments:

joel hanes said...

There are no ornithopters in our future (scaling problems), but this article intimates that we can reasonably expect tiny surveillance devices that fly like insects --

electric said...

We're under attack!

MT said...

I'm holding out for surveillance by microzeppelin.