Many animals possess adhesive pads on their feet, which are able to attach to various substrates while controlling adhesive forces during locomotion. This review article studies the morphology of adhesive devices in animals, and the physical mechanisms of wet adhesion and dry adhesion. The adhesive pads are either ‘smooth’ or densely covered with special adhesive setae. Smooth pads adhere by wet adhesion, which is facilitated by fluid secreted from the pads, whereas hairy pads can adhere by dry adhesion or wet adhesion. Contact area, distance between pad and substrate, viscosity and surface tension of the liquid filling the gap between pad and substrate are the most important factors which determine the wet adhesion. Dry adhesion was found only in hairy pads, which occurs in geckos and spiders. It was demonstrated that van der Waals interaction is the dominant adhesive force in geckos’ adhesion. The bio-inspired applications derived from adhesive pads are also reviewed.

A vast majority of mollusks grow a hard shell for protection. The structure of these shells comprises several levels of hierarchy that increase their strength and their resistance to natural threats. This article focuses on nacreous shells, which are composed of two distinct layers. The outer layer is made of calcite, which is a hard but brittle material, and the inner layer is made of nacre, a tough and ductile material. The inner and outer layers are therefore made of materials with distinct structures and properties. In this article, we demonstrate that this system is optimum to defeat attacks from predators. A two-scale modeling and optimization approach was used. At the macroscale, a two-layer finite element model of a seashell was developed to capture shell geometry. At the microscale, a representative volume element of the microstructure of nacre was used to model the elastic modulus of nacre as well as a multiaxial failure criterion, both expressed as function of microstructural parameters. Experiments were also performed on actual shells of red abalone to validate the results obtained from simulations and gain insight into the way the shell fails under sharp perforation. Both optimization and experimental results revealed that the shell displays optimum performance when two modes of failure coincide within the structure. Finally, guidelines for designing two-layer shells were proposed to improve the performance of engineered protective systems undergoing similar structural and loading conditions.

Bionic alumina samples were fabricated on convex dome type aluminum alloy substrate using hard anodizing technique. The convex domes on the bionic sample were fabricated by compression molding under a compressive stress of 92.5 MPa. The water contact angles of the as-anodized bionic samples were measured using a contact angle meter (JC2000A) with the 3 µL water drop at room temperature. The measurement of the wetting property showed that the water contact angle of the unmodified as-anodized bionic alumina samples increases from 90? to 137? with the anodizing time. The increase in water contract angle with anodizing time arises from the gradual formation of hierarchical structure or composite structure. The structure is composed of the micro-scaled alumina columns and pores. The height of columns and the depth of pores depend on the anodizing time. The water contact angle increases significantly from 96? to 152? when the samples were modified with self-assembled monolayer of octadecanethiol (ODT), showing a change in the wettability from hydrophobicity to super-hydrophobicity. This improvement in the wetting property is attributed to the decrease in the surface energy caused by the chemical modification.

In order to study ornithopter flight and to improve a dynamic model of flapping propulsion, a series of tests are conducted on a flapping-wing blimp. The blimp is designed and constructed from mylar plastic and balsa wood as a test platform for aerodynamics and flight dynamics. The blimp, 2.3 meters long and 420 gram mass, is propelled by its flapping wings. Due to buoyancy the wings have no lift requirement so that the distinction between lift and propulsion can be analyzed in a flight platform at low flight speeds. The blimp is tested using a Vicon motion tracking system and various initial conditions are tested including accelerating flight from standstill, decelerating from an initial speed higher than its steady state, and from its steady-state speed but disturbed in pitch angle. Test results are used to estimate parameters in a coupled quasi-steady aerodynamics/Newtonian flight dynamics model. This model is then analyzed using Floquet theory to determine local dynamic modes and stability. It is concluded that the dynamic model adequately describes the vehicle’s nonlinear behavior near the steady-state velocity and that the vehicle’s linearized modes are akin to those of a fixed-wing aircraft.

During the insect flight, the force peak at the start of each stroke contributes a lot to the total aerodynamic force. Yet how this force is generated is still controversial. Two current explanations to this are wake capture and Added Mass Effect (AME) mechanisms. To study the AME, we present an extended unsteady blade element model which takes both the added mass of fluid and rotational effect of the wing into account. Simulation results show a high force peak at the start of each stroke and are quite similar to the measured forces on the physical wing model. We found that although the Added Mass Force (AMF) of the medium contributes a lot to this force peak, the wake capture effect further augments this force and may play a more important role in delayed mode. Furthermore, we also found that there might be an unknown mechanism which may augment the AME during acceleration period at the start of each stroke, and diminish the AME during deceleration at the end of each stroke.

Numerical study on the unsteady hydrodynamic characteristics of oscillating rigid and flexible tuna-tails in viscous flow-field is performed. Investigations are conducted using Reynolds-Averaged Navier–Stokes (RANS) equations with a moving adaptive mesh. The effect of swimming speed, flapping amplitude, frequency and flexure amplitude on the propulsion performance of the rigid and flexible tuna-tails are investigated. Computational results reveal that a pair of leading edge vortices develop along the tail surface as it undergoes an oscillating motion. The propulsive efficiency has a strong correlation with various locomotive parameters. Peak propulsive efficiency can be obtained by adjusting these parameters. Particularly, when input power coefficient is less than 2.8, the rigid tail generates larger thrust force and higher propulsive efficiency than flexible tail. However, when input power coefficient is larger than 2.8, flexible tail is superior to rigid tail.

Biological evidence suggests that fish use mostly anterior muscles for steady swimming while the caudal part of the body is passive and, acting as a carrier of energy, transfers the momentum to the surrounding water. Inspired by those findings we hypothesize that certain swimming patterns can be achieved without copying the distributed actuation mechanism of fish but rather using a single actuator at the anterior part to create the travelling wave. To test the hypothesis a pitching flexible fin made of silicone rubber and silicone foam was designed by copying the stiffness distribution profile and geometry of a rainbow trout. The kinematics of the fin was compared to that of a steadily swimming trout. Fin’s propulsive wave length and tail-beat amplitude were determined while it was actuated by a single servo motor. Results showed that the propulsive wave length and tail-beat amplitude of a steadily swimming 50 cm rainbow trout was achieved with our biomimetic fin while stimulated using certain actuation parameters (frequency 2.31 Hz and amplitude 6.6 degrees). The study concluded that fish-like swimming can be achieved by mimicking the stiffness and geometry of a rainbow trout and disregarding the details of the actuation mechanism.

A flexible-rigid hopping mechanism which is inspired by the locust jumping was proposed, and its kinematic characteristics were analyzed. A series of experiments were conducted to observe locust morphology and jumping process. According to classic mechanics, the jumping process analysis was conducted to build the relationship of the locust jumping parameters. The take-off phase was divided into four stages in detail. Based on the biological observation and kinematics analysis, a mechanical model was proposed to simulate locust jumping. The forces of the flexible-rigid hopping mechanism at each stage were analyzed. The kinematic analysis using pseudo-rigid-body model was described by D-H method. It is confirmed that the proposed bionic mechanism has the similar performance as the locust hind leg in hopping. Moreover, the jumping angle which decides the jumping process was discussed, and its relation with other parameters was established. A calculation case analysis corroborated the method. The results of this paper show that the proposed bionic mechanism which is inspired by the locust hind limb has an excellent kinematics performance, which can provide a foundation for design and motion planning of the hopping robot.

To satisfy the requirements of real-time and high quality mosaics, a bionic compound eye visual system was designed by simulating the visual mechanism of a fly compound eye. Several CCD cameras were used in this system to imitate the small eyes of a compound eye. Based on the optical analysis of this system, a direct panoramic image mosaic algorithm was proposed. Several sub-images were collected by the bionic compound eye visual system, and then the system obtained the overlapping proportions of these sub-images and cut the overlap sections of the neighboring images. Thus, a panoramic image with a large field of view was directly mosaicked, which expanded the field and guaranteed the high resolution. The experimental results show that the time consumed by the direct mosaic algorithm is only 2.2% of that by the traditional image mosaic algorithm while guaranteeing mosaic quality. Furthermore, the proposed method effectively solved the problem of misalignment of the mosaic image and eliminated mosaic cracks as a result of the illumination factor and other factors. This method has better real-time properties compared to other methods.

Samples of pheromone lures used in boll weevil, Anthonomus grandis (Boheman), eradication programs are routinely analyzed by Gas Chromatography (GC) to ensure lures are adequately dosed with grandlure, the synthetic aggregation pheromone produced by male weevils. However, preparation of GC samples is tedious, time consuming, and requires a moderate level of experience. We examined the use of a commercially-available electronic nose (e-nose) for rapidly assessing the grandlure contents of lures. The e-nose was trained to recognize headspace collections of grandlure emitted from new lures and after lures were aged under field conditions for 4 d, 7 d, 10 d, and 14 d. Based on cross-validation of the training set, the e-nose was 82% accurate in discriminating among the different age classes of lures. Upon sampling headspace collections of pheromone from a different set of field-aged lures, the e-nose was <50% accurate in discriminating 4 d, 7 d, and 10 d aged lures from the other age classes of lures. However, the e-nose identified new and 14 d aged lure samples with 100% accuracy. In light of these findings, e-nose technology shows considerable promise as an alternative approach for rapidly assessing the initial grandlure contents of lures used in boll weevil eradication programs.

Molecular motors are nature’s nano-devices and the essential agents of movement that are an integral part of many living organisms. The supramolecular motor, called Nuclear Pore Complex (NPC), controls the transport of all cellular material between the cytoplasm and the nucleus that occurs naturally in biological cells of many organisms. In order to understand the design characteristics of the NPC, we developed a microdevice for drug/fluidic transport mimicking the coarse-grained representation of the NPC geometry through computational fluid dynamic analysis and optimization. Specifically, the role of the central plug in active fluidic/particle transport and passive transport (without central plug) was investigated. Results of flow rate, pressure and velocity profiles obtained from the models indicate that the central plug plays a major role in transport through this biomolecular machine. The results of this investigation show that fluidic transport and flow passages are important factors in designing NPC based nano- and micro-devices for drug delivery.

In this paper, the practicality and feasibility of Active Force Control (AFC) integrated with Fuzzy Logic(AFCAFL) applied to a two link planar arm actuated by a pair of Pneumatic Artificial Muscle (PAM) is investigated. The study emphasizes on the application and control of PAM actuators which may be considered as the new generation of actuators comprising fluidic muscle that has high-tension force, high power to weight ratio and high strength in spite of its drawbacks in the form of high nonlinearity behaviour, high hysteresis and time varying parameters. Fuzzy Logic (FL) is used as a technique to estimate the best value of the inertia matrix of robot arm essential for the AFC mechanism that is complemented with a conventional Proportional-Integral-Derivative (PID) control at the outermost loop. A simulation study was first performed followed by an experimental investigation for validation. The experimental study was based on the independent joint tracking control and coordinated motion control of the arm in Cartesian or task space. In the former, the PAM actuated arm is commanded to track the prescribed trajectories due to harmonic excitations at the joints for a given frequency, whereas for the latter, two sets of trajectories with different loadings were considered. A practical rig utilizing a Hardware-In-The-Loop Simulation (HILS) configuration was developed and a number of experiments were carried out. The results of the experiment and the simulation works were in good agreement, which verified the effectiveness and robustness of the proposed AFCAFL scheme actuated by PAM.