Flying of Insects

The abundance of flying insects in nature may make them seem ordinary to most of us. However, for approximately 350 million years [1], flying insects have been experimenting successfully with various aspects of flight, including aerodynamics [2,3], wing design [4], sensors [5,6], and flight control [7–9]. As a result, they have developed miniaturized flight apparatus and efficient computation architectures for executing aerobatic feats that are not yet emulated in engineering flight (Figure 11.1). This makes flying insects truly extraordinary small-scale aircraft from nature, and their design and working principles have received wide interest in both engineering and biology communities.