Engr for Educ:Drones/Biomimic

Catalog description

During the millions of years of evolution, nature has developed processes, objects, materials, and functions to increase efficiency. Through biomimicry and inspiration from this treasure trove, engineers and biologists have become interested in learning from biological insights. Sometimes looking at nature provides us the best answers for the development and optimization of different types of engineering systems including drones. Nature always has effective solutions for many complex tasks in different aerospace systems, such as energy, locomotion, navigation, control, sensing, and design. The growing science of biomimicry focuses on what engineers can learn quite a lot about efficient solutions for aerospace systems that nature has spent millions of years refining. As an example, one of the interesting aspects of avian flight dynamics is how natural flyers, such as birds and insects, can deform their shape to optimize their flight in different flight modes. Therefore, the concept of morphing structures for aerial vehicles can be originated from the observation of birds as they fly. This course discusses the knowledge learned and inspired by nature and biological systems to solve concrete drone engineering problems. Open-source software called XFLR5, FlapSim and WakeSimm, and OpenSim will be introduced and used for modeling, analysis, and simulation of bioinspired drone concepts.