Computational Bat Flight Visualization

Victor Mateevitsi

First attempt

Flight in the 20th century

Genesis

• Aeronautical engineering used animal flight

• Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV)

• Uninhabited Micro Aerial Vehicles

Uninhabited Micro Aerial Vehicles

• Low cost

• Small size – Wingspan < 15cm, weight < 500g

• Flight behavior changes

• Aerodynamics more common to small birds and insects

How can we simulate birds flight ?

Computational Simulation

• Simulating flapping wing flight

• Computational models of the fluid, structures and full morphing body dynamics

Bat Flight

• Extremely maneuverable animals

• Efficient and effective flapping vehicles

• Morphing membrane instead of feathered wings

Bat Flight Motion Capture

• Breuer Lab and Swartz Lab (Brown University)• High speed stereo digital video capture in

wind tunnels and flight cages• Body motion tracking using markers• Fluid measurements using smoke

Videos

• http://breuerlab.engin.brown.edu/research/batflight.html

Videos

The power of visualization

• Without a visualization the simulation would be only numbers

• People understand better the results by actually looking at the flight simulation

• They can visually compare the actual bat flight with the simulated one

Bat Flight Visualization

Science Magazine Vis Challenge

References

• http://www.39thflighteagle.org/About/Legend.htm

• http://artfiles.art.com/5/p/LRG/14/1459/T5DQ000Z/leonardo-da-vinci-flying-machine.jpg

• http://www.mit.edu/~djwillis/FlappingFlight/BatFlight.html

• http://www.aaas.org/news/releases/2007/images/0927science_viz_bat_lg.jpg