Emergence of collective behaviours from local Voronoi topological perception.

This article addresses how diverse collective behaviours arise from simple and realistic decisions made entirely at the level of each agent's personal space in the sense of the Voronoi diagram. We present a discrete-time model in two dimensions in which individual agents are aware of their local Voronoi environment and may seek static target locations. In particular, agents only communicate directly with their Voronoi neighbours and make decisions based on the geometry of their own Voronoi cells.

Aerodynamic Ground Effect in Fruitfly Sized Insect Takeoff.

Aerodynamic ground effect in flapping-wing insect flight is of importance to comparative morphologies and of interest to the micro-air-vehicle (MAV) community. Recent studies, however, show apparently contradictory results of either some significant extra lift or power savings, or zero ground effect. Here we present a numerical study of fruitfly sized insect takeoff with a specific focus on the significance of leg thrust and wing kinematics.