Gyroscopes measure rotation¹ in everyday technologies, from unmanned aerial vehicles to cell phone screen stabilizers. Though many animals can move with more precision and accuracy than our best-engineered aircraft and technologies, gyroscopes are rarely found in nature. Scientists know of just one group of insects, the group including flies, that has something that behaves like a gyroscope -- sensors² called halteres, clublike structures that evolved from wings.

 

Halteres provide information about the rotation of the body during flight, which helps flies perform aerial acrobatics³ and maintain stability and direction. But how do other insects without these sensors regulate flight dynamics⁴, biologists have wondered?

 

University of Washington research suggests that insects' wings may also serve a gyroscopic function -- a discovery that sheds new insight on natural flight and could help with developing new sensory⁵ systems in engineering.

 

Published in January in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface⁶, the research was supported by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research. It was a key part of the successful proposal for an Air Force Center of Excellence⁷ on Nature-Inspired Flight Technologies and Ideas, a new UW center focused on understanding how elements in nature can inform the development of remotely controlled small aircraft.

 

"I was surprised at the results," said Brad Dickerson, a graduate student in biology and co-author of the study. "This idea of wings being gyroscopes has existed for a long time, but this paper is the first to really address how that would be possible."

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