@article {2168,
	title = {Flight dynamics and control of evasive maneuvers: the fruit fly{\textquoteright}s takeoff.},
	journal = {IEEE Transactions on Bio-Medical Engineering},
	volume = {56},
	year = {2009},
	month = {2009 Sep},
	pages = {2295-8},
	abstract = {<p>We have approached the problem of reverse-engineering the flight control mechanism of the fruit fly by studying the dynamics of the responses to a visual stimulus during takeoff. Building upon a prior framework [G. Card and M. Dickinson, J. Exp. Biol., vol. 211, pp. 341-353, 2008], we seek to understand the strategies employed by the animal to stabilize attitude and orientation during these evasive, highly dynamical maneuvers. As a first step, we consider the dynamics from a gray-box perspective: examining lumped forces produced by the insect{\textquoteright}s legs and wings. The reconstruction of the flight initiation dynamics, based on the unconstrained motion formulation for a rigid body, allows us to assess the fly{\textquoteright}s responses to a variety of initial conditions induced by its jump. Such assessment permits refinement by using a visual tracking algorithm to extract the kinematic envelope of the wings [E. I. Fontaine, F. Zabala, M. Dickinson, and J. Burdick, "Wing and body motion during flight initiation in Drosophila revealed by automated visual tracking," submitted for publication] in order to estimate lift and drag forces [F. Zabala, M. Dickinson, and R. Murray, "Control and stability of insect flight during highly dynamical maneuvers," submitted for publication], and recording actual leg-joint kinematics and using them to estimate jump forces [F. Zabala, "A bio-inspired model for directionality control of flight initiation," to be published.]. In this paper, we present the details of our approach in a comprehensive manner, including the salient results.</p>
},
	keywords = {Algorithms, Animal, Animals, Biomechanics, Computer-Assisted, Drosophila melanogaster, Escape Reaction, Flight, Image Processing, Video Recording},
	issn = {1558-2531},
	doi = {10.1109/TBME.2009.2027606},
	author = {Zabala, Francisco A and Card, Gwyneth M and Fontaine, Ebraheem I and Dickinson, Michael H and Murray, Richard M}
}
