Despite mankind’s remarkable advancements in aerial technology, flying birds and insects still outperform the agility, maneuverability, and stability of man-made aircrafts. The purpose of FWMAV is to investigate the physical phenomena behind unsteady aerodynamics and nonlinear flight to achieve its aerial capabilities. Three main components are evaluated separately: (1) the non-linear flight mechanism, (2) the flow field, and (3) the force generated. The ultimate goal is to combine the accumulated data, extrapolate quantifiable results, and illustrate the high performance of FWMAVs. The team tackles problems to determine solutions that lie at the forefront of evolving flapping wing mechanics . Engineering a drone that flies utilizing four sets of flapping wings (known as a ‘quad-flapper’) stems from theories such as Kapitza’s pendulum, which demonstrates vibrational stabilization. Acquiring greater control over all aspects of the design provided opportunities for extensive research and development to supplement the solidification of the Beta Drone’s flight potential. From the motor, to the crank-and-flapper system, the most efficient combinations were examined from thrust and lift data gathered from the load cells. Alongside these drones, the team strives to find different methods of replicating naturalistic flapping motion observed in nature.

It has been widely reported that isoprene emissions from the Arctic ecosystem have a strong temperature response. Here we identify sedges (Carex spp. and Eriophorum spp.) as key contributors to this high sensitivity using plant chamber experiments. We observe that sedges exhibit a markedly stronger temperature response compared to that of other isoprene emitters and predictions by the widely accepted isoprene emission model, the Model of Emissions of Gases and Aerosols from Nature (MEGAN). MEGAN is able to reproduce eddy-covariance flux observations at three high-latitude sites by integrating our findings. Furthermore, the omission of the strong temperature responses of Arctic isoprene emitters causes a 20% underestimation of isoprene emissions for the high-latitude regions of the Northern Hemisphere during 2000-2009 in the Community Land Model with the MEGAN scheme. We also find that the existing model had underestimated the long-term trend of isoprene emissions from 1960 to 2009 by 55% for the high-latitude regions.