CAREER: Odor-Guided Flapping Flight: Novel Fluid Dynamic Mechanisms of Insect Navigation

昆虫依靠气味引导的拍打飞行来交配和捕食。它们通过在复杂的流动环境中追踪气味轨迹来探测和定位远处的目标。在这种气味引导的导航过程中，扇动的翅膀用于产生力量，并通过翅膀诱导的流动主动将气味羽流吸引到天线上。据推测，昆虫的“拍打”与哺乳动物的“嗅”具有相同的功能，以增强嗅觉探测。了解昆虫是如何在空气动力学性能和嗅觉灵敏度之间取得平衡的，是将这一壮举转化为工程解决方案的垫脚石，这些解决方案可用于在没有gps的环境中为微型飞行器导航，并在自然灾害搜索、化学品泄漏监测和毒品贩运检测中得到重要应用。为此，这个项目的目标是建立一个物理驱动的理解气味跟踪拍打飞行在自然界。该项目还包括各种教育和外展活动，以促进工程的多样性，并加强未来的STEM劳动力。自然界嗅觉搜索的流体动力学原理在很大程度上仍然未知。本项目将验证通过调节扑翼运动来调节非定常翼流中气味的传递，从而提高航行嗅觉灵敏度的假设。将采用高保真计算模拟和理论处理相结合的方法来研究扑翼产生的非定常流动及其相关的气味传输过程。应用一种新的基于计算流体动力学的同步定位和绘图方法来探索飞行昆虫的气味跟踪算法。在完成以下三个具体目标后，本研究将揭示气味导航在自然界中的总体流体动力学机制：1)表征气味跟踪飞行中的非定常空气动力学和气味传输；2)确定翼致非定常流对气味羽流结构时空分布的影响；3)阐明航行过程中不稳定流动与气味输运的相互作用。这一发现将推动具有优越空气动力学性能和嗅觉灵敏度的仿生飞行机器人设计原则的发展。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Insects rely on odor-guided flapping flight to mate and hunt for prey. They navigate by tracking odor trails in complex flow environments to detect and locate distant targets. During this odor-guided navigation, the flapping wings serve for force production and actively draw odor plumes towards the antennae via wing-induced flow. It is hypothesized that the “flapping” used by insects serves the same function as the “sniffing” in mammals for enhancing olfactory detection. Understanding how insects achieve the balance between aerodynamic performance and olfactory sensitivity is the stepping stone towards transforming this feat in engineering solutions for the navigation of miniature aerial vehicles in GPS-denied environments, with important applications for search in natural disasters, chemical leaking monitoring, and drug trafficking detection. To this end, the objective of this project is to establish a physics-driven understanding of the odor-tracking flapping flight in nature. The project also encompasses a variety of education and outreach activities to promote diversity in engineering and strengthen the future STEM workforce.The underlying fluid dynamic principles of olfactory searching in nature remain largely unknown. This project will test the hypothesis that the enhancement of the olfactory sensitivity during navigation can be achieved by regulating the odorant transport in unsteady wing-induced flow through modulating flapping locomotion. A combined high-fidelity computational simulation and theoretical treatment will be used to examine the unsteady flow generated by flapping wings and its associated odorant transport process. The application of a novel computational fluid dynamics-informed simultaneous localization and mapping will be used to explore the odor-tracking algorithms in flying insects. The research will reveal the overarching fluid dynamic mechanisms of odor-guided navigation in nature after the completion of three specific aims: 1) characterize the unsteady aerodynamics and odorant transport in odor-tracking flights; 2) determine the influences of wing-induced unsteady flow on the spatiotemporal distribution of odor plume structures; 3) elucidate the interactions between the unsteady flow and odorant transport during navigation. The findings will advance the development of design principles for bio-inspired flying robots with superior aerodynamic performance and olfactory sensitivity.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.