Butterflies offer lessons for robots
By Kimberly Patch, Technology Research News
It turns out that butterflies’ fluttering is neither random nor clumsy.
Researchers from Oxford University in England have devised a method of studying the way butterflies fly, and their initial results show that the insects have many more tricks of flight than they get credit for.
The researchers trained red admiral butterflies to fly between artificial flowers in a wind tunnel, and recorded the way air flowed around their wings using smoke and high-resolution cameras. The work provides fodder for researchers working on insect-sized flying robots.
