Page 101 - Biomimetics: Technology Imitates Nature

Harun Yahya

20th-Century Science Failed to Unravel the Aerodynamic
Techniques That Insects Use to Fly

As an insect flies, it beats its wings an average of several hundred
times a second. Some insects can even flap and rotate their wings 600
times a second. 67
So many movements are carried out with such extraordinary rapidi-
ty that this design can’t possibly be reproduced technologically. In order
to reveal the flight techniques of fruit flies, Michael Dickinson, a professor
in the department of integrative biology at the University of California,
Berkeley, and his colleagues constructed a robot, called Robofly. Robofly
imitates the insect's flapping motion, but on a 100-fold larger scale and at
only a 1,000 th of the fly’s speed. It can flap its wings once every five sec-
onds, driven by six computer-controlled motors. 68
For years, many scientists like Professor Dickinson have been carry-
ing out experiments hoping to discover the details of how insects flap
their wings back and forth. During his ex-
periments on fruit flies, Dickinson discov-
ered that insect wings do not merely oscil-
late up and down, as if attached by a sim-
ple hinge, but actually use the most com-
plex aerodynamic techniques. Moreover,
the wings change orientation during each
flap: The wing’s top surface faces up as the
wing moves downwards, but then the
wing rotates on its axis so that the under-
side faces up as the wing rises. Scientists
trying to analyze these complex motions
say that the conventional steady-state aero-
dynamics, the approach that works for air- Michael Dickinson

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