Flight performance and visual control of flight of the free-flying housefly ( Musca domestica L.) I. Organization of the flight motor

Free-flying houseflies have been filmed simultaneously from two sides. The orientation of the flies’ body axes in three-dimensional space can be seen on the films. A method is presented for the reconstruction of the flies’ movements in a fly-centred coordinate system, relative to an external coordinate system and relative to the airstream. The flies are regarded as three-dimensionally rigid bodies. They move with respect to the six degrees of freedom they thus possess. The analysis of the organization of the flight motor from the kinematic data leads to the following conclusions: the sideways movements can, at least qualitatively, be explained by taking into account the sideways forces resulting from rolling the body about the long axis and the influence of inertia. Thus, the force vector generated by the flight motor is most probably located in the fly’s midsagittal plane. The direction of this vector can be varied by the fly in a restricted range only. In contrast, the direction of the torque vector can be freely adjusted by the fly. No coupling between the motor force and the torques is indicated. Changes of flight direction may be explained by changes in the orientation of the body axes: straight flight at an angle of sideslip differing from zero is due to rolling. Sideways motion during the banked turns as well as the decrease of translation velocity observed in curves are a consequence of the inertial forces and rolling. The results are discussed with reference to studies about the aerodynamic performance of insects and the constraints for aerial pursuit.

Author(s):  
Maxim V. Shamolin

We systematize some results on the study of the equations of spatial motion of dynamically symmetric fixed rigid bodies–pendulums located in a nonconservative force fields. The form of these equations is taken from the dynamics of real fixed rigid bodies placed in a homogeneous flow of a medium. In parallel, we study the problem of a spatial motion of a free rigid body also located in a similar force fields. Herewith, this free rigid body is influenced by a nonconservative tracing force; under action of this force, either the magnitude of the velocity of some characteristic point of the body remains constant, which means that the system possesses a nonintegrable servo constraint, or the center of mass of the body moves rectilinearly and uniformly; this means that there exists a nonconservative couple of forces in the system


2017 ◽  
Vol 22 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 75-97 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. V. Shamolin

In this article, we systemize some results on the study of the equations of spatial motion of dynamically symmetric fixed rigid bodies–pendulums located in a nonconservative force fields. The form of these equations is taken from the dynamics of real fixed rigid bodies placed in a homogeneous flow of a medium. In parallel, we study the problem of a spatial motion of a free rigid body also located in a similar force fields. Herewith, this free rigid body is influenced by a nonconservative tracing force; under action of this force, either the magnitude of the velocity of some characteristic point of the body remains constant, which means that the system possesses a nonintegrable servo constraint. The obtained results are systematized and served in the invariant form. We also show the nontrivial topological and mechanical analogies.


Author(s):  
Paul WJ Henselmans ◽  
Gerwin Smit ◽  
Paul Breedveld

One of the most prominent drivers in the development of surgical procedures is the will to reduce their invasiveness, attested by minimally invasive surgery being the gold standards in many surgical procedures and natural orifices transluminal endoscopic surgery gaining acceptance. A logical next step in this pursuit is the introduction of hyper-redundant instruments that can insert themselves along multi-curved paths referred to as Follow-the-Leader motion. In the current state of the art, two different types of Follow-the-Leader instruments can be distinguished. One type of instrument is robotized; the movements of the shaft are controlled from outside the patient by actuators, for example, electric motors, and a controller storing a virtual track of the desired path. The other type of instrument is more mechanical; the movements of the shaft are controlled from inside the patient by a physical track that guides the shaft along the desired path. While in the robotized approach all degrees of freedom of the shaft require an individual actuator, the mechanical approach makes the number of degrees of freedom independent from the number of actuators. A desirable feature as an increasing number of actuators will inevitably drive up costs and increase the footprint of an instrument. Building the physical track inside the body does, however, impede miniaturization of the shaft’s diameter. This article introduces a new fully mechanical approach for Follow-the-Leader motion using a pre-determined physical track that is placed outside the body. This new approach was validated with a prototype called MemoFlex, which supports a Ø5 mm shaft (standard size in minimally invasive surgery) that contains 28-degrees-of-freedom and utilizes a simple steel rod as its physical track. Even though the performance of the MemoFlex leaves room for improvement, especially when following multiple curves, it does validate the proposed concept for Follow-the-Leader motion in three-dimensional space.


2007 ◽  
Vol 97 (1) ◽  
pp. 604-617 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eliana M. Klier ◽  
Hongying Wang ◽  
J. Douglas Crawford

Two central, related questions in motor control are 1) how the brain represents movement directions of various effectors like the eyes and head and 2) how it constrains their redundant degrees of freedom. The interstitial nucleus of Cajal (INC) integrates velocity commands from the gaze control system into position signals for three-dimensional eye and head posture. It has been shown that the right INC encodes clockwise (CW)-up and CW-down eye and head components, whereas the left INC encodes counterclockwise (CCW)-up and CCW-down components, similar to the sensitivity directions of the vertical semicircular canals. For the eyes, these canal-like coordinates align with Listing’s plane (a behavioral strategy limiting torsion about the gaze axis). By analogy, we predicted that the INC also encodes head orientation in canal-like coordinates, but instead, aligned with the coordinate axes for the Fick strategy (which constrains head torsion). Unilateral stimulation (50 μA, 300 Hz, 200 ms) evoked CW head rotations from the right INC and CCW rotations from the left INC, with variable vertical components. The observed axes of head rotation were consistent with a canal-like coordinate system. Moreover, as predicted, these axes remained fixed in the head, rotating with initial head orientation like the horizontal and torsional axes of a Fick coordinate system. This suggests that the head is ordinarily constrained to zero torsion in Fick coordinates by equally activating CW/CCW populations of neurons in the right/left INC. These data support a simple mechanism for controlling head orientation through the alignment of brain stem neural coordinates with natural behavioral constraints.


Author(s):  
Ahmed A. Shabana ◽  
Martin B. Hamper ◽  
James J. O’Shea

In vehicle system dynamics, the effect of the gyroscopic moments can be significant during curve negotiations. The absolute angular velocity of the body can be expressed as the sum of two vectors; one vector is due to the curvature of the curve, while the second vector is due to the rate of changes of the angles that define the orientation of the body with respect to a coordinate system that follows the body motion. In this paper, the configuration of the body in the global coordinate system is defined using the trajectory coordinates in order to examine the effect of the gyroscopic moments in the case of curve negotiations. These coordinates consist of arc length, two relative translations and three relative angles. The relative translations and relative angles are defined with respect to a trajectory coordinate system that follows the motion of the body on the curve. It is shown that when the yaw and roll angles relative to the trajectory coordinate system are constrained and the motion is predominantly rolling, the effect of the gyroscopic moment on the motion becomes negligible, and in the case of pure rolling and zero yaw and roll angles, the generalized gyroscopic moment associated with the system degrees of freedom becomes identically zero. The analysis presented in this investigation sheds light on the danger of using derailment criteria that are not obtained using laws of motion, and therefore, such criteria should not be used in judging the stability of railroad vehicle systems. Furthermore, The analysis presented in this paper shows that the roll moment which can have a significant effect on the wheel/rail contact forces depends on the forward velocity in the case of curve negotiations. For this reason, roller rigs that do not allow for the wheelset forward velocity cannot capture these moment components, and therefore, cannot be used in the analysis of curve negotiations. A model of a suspended railroad wheelset is used in this investigation to study the gyroscopic effect during curve negotiations.


1999 ◽  
Vol 82 (4) ◽  
pp. 1865-1875 ◽  
Author(s):  
P. Wilson ◽  
P. D. Kitchener ◽  
P. J. Snow

The organization of cutaneous receptive fields in the ventroposterior (VP) thalamus of the common marmosets ( Callithrix jacchus) was determined from single-unit recordings, and these data were correlated with the cytochrome oxidase (CO) histochemistry of the thalamus in the same animals. Under continuously maintained ketamine anesthesia, the receptive fields of a total of 192 single units were recorded from the right VP thalamus using 2 MΩ glass microelectrodes. After the receptive fields were mapped, the brains were reacted for CO histochemistry on 50-μm coronal frozen sections through the entire VP thalamus. The majority of units were localized to the CO-reactive regions that define the medial and lateral divisions of VP (VPm and VPl). Apart from the expected finding of the face being represented in VPm and the body in VPl, reconstructing the electrode tracks and unit locations in the histological sections revealed a general association between discrete regions of CO reactivity and the representation of specific body regions. Some low-threshold cutaneous units were apparently localized to VPi (the CO weak regions dorsal, ventral, and interdigitating with, the CO regions of VP). These VPi units were clearly part of the same representational map as the VPl and VPm units. We conclude that the low-threshold cutaneous receptive fields of the marmoset are organized in a single continuous representation of the contralateral body surface, and that this representation can most simply be interpreted as being folded or crumpled into the three-dimensional space of VP thalamus. The folded nature of the body map in VP may be related to the folded nature of VP as revealed by CO histochemistry.


2004 ◽  
Vol 14 (08) ◽  
pp. 2525-2553 ◽  
Author(s):  
IGOR N. GASHENENKO ◽  
PETER H. RICHTER

The general Euler-Poisson problem of rigid body motion is investigated. We study the three-dimensional algebraic level surfaces of the first integrals, and their topological bifurcations. The main result of this article is an analytical and qualitatively complete description of the projections of these integral manifolds to the body-fixed space of angular velocities. We classify the possible types of these invariant sets and analyze the dependence of their topology on the parameters of the body and the constants of the first integrals. Particular emphasis is given to the enveloping surfaces of the sets of admissible angular velocities. Their pre-images in the reduced phase space induce a Heegaard splitting which lends itself for a general choice of complete Poincaré surfaces of section, irrespective of whether or not the system is integrable.


Author(s):  
Aliakbar Alamdari ◽  
Venkat Krovi

This paper examines the design, analysis and control of a novel hybrid articulated-cable parallel platform for upper limb rehabilitation in three dimensional space. The proposed lightweight, low-cost, modular reconfigurable parallel-architecture robotic device is comprised of five cables and a single linear actuator which connects a six degrees-of-freedom moving platform to a fixed base. This novel design provides an attractive architecture for implementation of a home-based rehabilitation device as an alternative to bulky and expensive serial robots. The manuscript first examines the kinematic analysis prior to developing the dynamic equations via the Newton-Euler formulation. Subsequently, different spatial motion trajectories are prescribed for rehabilitation of subjects with arm disabilities. A low-level trajectory tracking controller is developed to achieve the desired trajectory performance while ensuing that the unidirectional tensile forces in the cables are maintained. This is now evaluated via a simulation case-study and the development of a physical testbed is underway.


2016 ◽  
Vol 39 (7) ◽  
pp. 1037-1046 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hossein Nourmohammadi ◽  
Jafar Keighobadi ◽  
Mohsen Bahrami

Biomedical applications of swimming microrobots comprising of drug delivery, microsurgery and disease monitoring make the research more interesting in MEMS technology. In this paper, inspired by the flagellar motion of microorganisms like bacteria and also considering the recent attempts in one/two-dimensional modelling of swimming microrobots, a three degrees-of-freedom swimming microrobot is developed. In the proposed design, the body of the swimming microrobot is driven by multiple prokaryotic flagella which produce a propulsion force through rotating in the fluid media. The presented swimming microrobot has the capability of doing three-dimensional manoeuvres and moving along three-dimensional reference paths. In this paper, following dynamical modelling of the microrobot motion, a suitable controller is designed for path tracking purposes. Based on the resistive-force theory, the generated propulsion force by the flagella is modelled. The feedback linearization method is applied for perfect tracking control of the swimming microrobot on the desired motion trajectories. It is seen that, by the use of three flagella, the microrobot is able to perform three-dimensional manoeuvres. From the simulation results, the tracking performance of the designed control system is perfectly guaranteed which enables the microrobot to perform the desired three-dimensional manoeuvres and follow the desired trajectory.


2013 ◽  
Vol 442 ◽  
pp. 338-341
Author(s):  
A Qiang Sun

The package structure is a three-dimensional space form, so people know the products are in used in the packaging. In packaging materials for paper use is very extensive, paper products are easy to shape the body shape for easy printing and recyclable advantage. This paper study design of the paper packaging structural, combining paper packaging structural design applications to explore the paper packaging structural morphology and environmentalist design consciousness.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document