A find for an engineer: how a special flight technique of feather-winged beetles can be used in robotics

Entomologists at Moscow State University have discovered the ability of extremely fast and maneuverable flight in the smallest perwing beetles.

A special movement technique can be used to create miniature flying robots, scientists believe.

This is reported in the journal of the US National Academy of Sciences Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Scientists at Moscow State University conducted an experiment in which they compared the flight characteristics of various families of beetles caught in Vietnam and Russia.

Insects moved through transparent boxes in bright, but invisible to them infrared light, under the supervision of high-speed video cameras.

"This is the first comparative study of the main characteristics of flight of different species of the smallest beetles: representatives of the featherwing family Ptiliidae and related larger beetles from the evolutionarily close families of Staphylinidae and Silphidae dead beetles," said Sergei Farisenkov, junior researcher at the Department of Entomology at Moscow State University.

The greatest interest of scientists was aroused by the representatives of the smallest species - the Ptiliidae featherfly.

They differ from others not only in size, but also in the structure of the wings

their narrow wing plate is framed along the periphery with long bristles that function as bird feathers

According to Sergey Farisenkov,

The evolutionary transition to tiny sizes and perwings led these insects to develop a special flight mechanism and allowed them to qualitatively increase the efficiency of movement through the air.

“Flying with the help of such wings, beetles use a special mechanism of flight, flapping their wings over the body and then under it with each

flap

” said Sergey Farisenkov.

• Flight parameters of beetles Ptiliidae, Staphylinidae, Silphidae (from left to right)

• © Sergey Farisenkov / Moscow State University

Experts compared the main flight characteristics of insects: speed in general, speed when moving in a horizontal plane and acceleration.

Then they reconstructed the trajectories of their flight on a computer and analyzed various parameters of the movements along these trajectories.

It turned out that, despite their tiny size, the wingbeads are extremely fast and maneuverable.

They fly at approximately the same speed as their relative beetles several times larger than them.

At the same time, the maximum acceleration of some of the beetles was almost double that of other beetles from the experiment.

It turned out that certain types of perwing wings are capable of covering a distance 975 times the length of their body per second.

To date, this is the highest relative speed of movement in the horizontal plane among all representatives of the animal world, the researchers note.

Also, scientists noted the possible applied effect of their discovery.

At present, small aircraft are larger than insects, but, like feather-wings, they follow the path of miniaturization and the search for new flight mechanisms.

Biologists hope their work will resonate with engineers developing miniature flying robots.

“In the future, it is planned to continue studying the flight of the smallest beetles and their larger relatives (as well as other microinsects and larger representatives of related groups), not only analyzing the parameters of their movement through the air, but also modeling the flight mechanism, 

concluded

Aleksey Polilov, Head of the Department of Entomology, Faculty of Biology, Moscow State University.