Fly Behavior Analysis for Wing Damage Compensation during Flight
Published:
Supervisor: Professor Jean-Michel Mongeau
Fly Behavior Analysis for Wing Damage Compensation during Flight
As a new PhD student in the Mongeau Lab, I learned to operate the 3D wing motion recording system with laser-triggered capture and gained experience in using custom software for 3D reconstruction of wing kinematics. I assisted senior PhD student Dr. Wael Salem with experiments and data analysis, contributing to his dissertation on insect flight biomechanics.
🔹 Research Focus
- Investigated how wing damage affects flight control in tethered flies.
- Analyzed wingbeat frequency changes following mechanical perturbations.
- Assisted in uncovering compensatory mechanisms underlying stable flight despite wing asymmetry.
project overview
🔹 Key Contributions
- Acquired and analyzed 11 experimental datasets on wing damage during flight.
- Performed 3D flight behavior reconstruction for 16 flies using custom reconstruction software from high-speed videos (8000fps).
- Derived wing Euler angles from 3D flight reconstruction to quantify wing kinematics.
- Contributed data and analysis to support Dr. Wael Salem in his PhD dissertation.
🔹 Skills & Tools
- Experimental analysis: experiment on fruit flies, behavioral assays, perturbation experiments.
- Camera calibration: easywand for camera calibration to obtain DLT parameters.
- 3D reconstruction: custom software for motion capture and reconstruction.
Software Used:
- MATLAB – control high-speed cameras and the triggered laser, data processing, signal analysis, and kinematic calculations
- DLTdv - MATLAB tools for digitizing video files and calibrating cameras