Flight Dynamics and Sensorimotor Feedback at Insect Scales

Abstract

Insects and other small organisms exhibit incredible agility and robustness in flight, unmatched by today’s engineered systems. Their nervous systems have evolved to make useful reductions of sensory-rich and high dimensional data, forming simple representations along with feedback control paradigms that allow organisms to perform well with limited computation in the presence of uncertainty. My laboratory has applied model reduction tools to high fidelity simulations and experiments better understand the aerodynamics and dynamics of flight at these scales as well as control-theoretic tools to understand the sensorimotor feedback principles. This talk will focus on the aerodynamics and flight dynamics modeling efforts and how those reduced order models are being used to provide insight into the potential benefits of the unique sensorimotor architectures in these animals.

J. SEAN HUMBERT

University of Colorado Boulder