Measuring the body position, attitude and wing deformation of a free-flight dragonfly by combining a comb fringe pattern with sign points on the wing

The simultaneous measurements of the body position, attitude and the wing kinematics of a free-flight insect are very important for analysing the flight performance. In this paper, a method based on combining a comb fringe pattern with sign points on the dragonfly wing has been developed to improve the accuracy in body position and attitude measurement or in construction of a local body-fixed coordinate system. Meanwhile, the wing kinematics can be measured simultaneously by the comb fringe pattern method. The method has been used successfully in the measurement of a free-flight dragonfly.