Flight tutorials from insects

Scientists recently decided to take a closer look at how insects are able to fly so well. Their mastery of aerodynamics is impressive and a lot can be learned from it. In this case scientist wanted to apply the way fruit flies fly to new technology for better flying robots.
The general question researchers wanted to answer was if fruit flies beat their wings faster than neurons can fire how much of the flight process are they in control of. They placed fruit flies inside of box where they then subjected them to LED projections that made them dizzy and fly in u-turns. What was recorded on cameras was later analyzed to look at wing posistions. The final consensus from the study was that fruit fly wings operate in two ways. Their wing motions are similiar to "oars" and similiar to "wind up toys". The oar motion happens when the fly turns. They discovered with as little as a 9 degree difference between wings a change of direction can be accomplished. The article compared this to when a rower pulls harder on one oar to turn the boat. The wind up toy analogy helps explain how vital the flies unique joints are to flying. The joint acts like a spring that is triggered by one muscle to create a certain wing tilt.
All of these discoveries have the potential to substantially influence they way engineers think about designing things that fly. This could be anything from a robot to an airplane. These technologies that function on being light weight and very aerodynamic can lead to higher efficiency. I think the whole idea of art imitating nature's phenomenon is once again seen here and you can thus see how important it is to science and advancement.