About

Bangce Cheng is a PhD candidate in Comparative Literature and Asian Studies at Penn State University. His research interests include Sinophone literature and culture, translation studies, urban studies, and ecocriticism. His dissertation examines how literatures from Hong Kong, Singapore, and Mainland China engage urban ecologies as a lens for exploring complex, place-specific sociopolitical concerns, particularly in relation to these regions’ postcolonial and postsocialist transformations. Before attending Penn State, he obtained his MPhil in Chinese at the University of Hong Kong, where he studied the translation and promotion of contemporary Chinese literature in the Anglophone world.

Research topics

• Physics
• Mechanics
• Computer Science
• Artificial Intelligence
• Materials science
• Structural engineering
• Aerospace engineering
• Engineering
• Classical mechanics
• Mechanical engineering

Selected publications

• Efficiency and control trade-offs and work loop characteristics of flapping-wing systems with synchronous and asynchronous muscles

  Journal of The Royal Society Interface · 2025-03-01 · 4 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Natural fliers with flapping wings face the dual challenges of energy efficiency and active control of wing motion for achieving diverse modes of flight. It is hypothesized that flapping-wing systems use resonance to improve muscle mechanical output energy efficiency, a principle often followed in bioinspired flapping-wing robots. However, resonance can limit the degree of active control, a trade-off rooted in the dynamics of wing motor systems and can be potentially reflected in muscle work loops. To systematically investigate how energy efficiency trades off with active control of wingbeat frequency and amplitude, here we developed a parsimonious model of the wing motor system with either synchronous or asynchronous power muscles. We then non-dimensionalized the model and performed simulations to examine model characteristics as functions of Weis-Fogh number and dimensionless flapping frequency. For synchronous power muscles, our model predicts that energy efficiency trades off with frequency control rather than amplitude control at high Weis-Fogh numbers; however, no such trade-off was found for models with asynchronous power muscles. The work loops alone are insufficient to fully capture wing motor characteristics, and therefore fail to directly reflect the trade-offs. Finally, using simulation results, we predict that natural fliers function at Weis-Fogh numbers close to 1.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Study on crystal growth and distribution characteristics of supercooling salt solution in the process of flow

  International Communications in Heat and Mass Transfer · 2025-07-02 · 2 citations

  articleSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Thermal design and on-orbit performance of remote sensing cameras on commercial microsatellites

  Applied Thermal Engineering · 2025-09-25 · 3 citations

  article
  PublisherDOI

• Thermal Control Strategy for Remote Sensing Cameras on Commercial Microsatellites: A Precision-Oriented Study with Theoretical, Experimental, and In-Orbit Analysis

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2025-01-01

  preprintOpen access
  PublisherDOI

• Study on Crystal Growth and Distribution Characteristics of Supercooled Salt Solution in the Process of Flow

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2025-01-01

  preprintOpen accessSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• From Flies to Robots: Inverted Landing in Small Quadcopters With Dynamic Perching

  IEEE Transactions on Robotics · 2025-01-01 · 5 citations

  articleSenior author

  Inverted landing is a routine behavior among a number of animal fliers. However, mastering this feat poses a considerable challenge for robotic fliers, especially to perform dynamic perching with rapid body rotations (or flips) and landing against gravity. Inverted landing in flies have suggested that optical flow senses are closely linked to the precise triggering and control of body flips that lead to a variety of successful landing behaviors. Building upon this knowledge, we aimed to replicate the flies' landing behaviors in small quadcopters by developing a control policy general to arbitrary ceiling-approach conditions. First, we employed reinforcement learning in simulation to optimize discrete sensory-motor pairs across a broad spectrum of ceiling-approach velocities and directions. Next, we converted the sensory-motor pairs to a two-stage control policy in a continuous optical flow space augmented by ceiling distance measurement. The control policy consists of a first-stage Flip-Trigger Policy, which employs a one-class support vector machine, and a second-stage Flip-Action Policy, implemented as a feed-forward neural network. To transfer the inverted-landing policy to physical systems, we utilized domain randomization and system identification techniques for a zero-shot sim-to-real transfer with emulated optical flow using external motion tracking. As a result, we successfully achieved a range of robust inverted-landing behaviors in small quadcopters, emulating those observed in flies.

  PublisherDOI

• Effect of acidic electrolytic water pretreatment on the behavior of pulsation vacuum drying of wolfberries: Ultrastructural, drying characteristics, and quality studies

  Drying Technology · 2025-06-02 · 1 citations

  article
  PublisherDOI

• Tunable Mechanism Enables Robust Surface Perching Under Different Landing Impacts and Orientation Misalignment

  Advanced Intelligent Systems · 2025-04-10 · 1 citations

  articleOpen accessCorresponding

  Perching significantly enhances the energy efficiency and operational versatility of aerial robots. This article introduces a passive and tunable perching mechanism designed for smooth surfaces. The design features a bistable mechanism (BM) with a soft suction cup, augmented by two sets of shape memory alloy (SMA) actuators for active tuning. The BM enables rapid attachment upon surface contact. A set of SMA wires can increase the BM's triggering force to handle high contact speeds, while a set of SMA springs attached to the suction cup's edges can pull the cup to handle orientation misalignment. Experiments are conducted to characterize how the SMA actuators influence the BM's triggering force and the suction cup's displacement under continuous steady‐state low‐voltage heating. Additional experiments demonstrate fast tuning using momentary high‐voltage heating of the SMA actuators to enhance energy efficiency. The mechanism enables successful perching on smooth surfaces and adapt to varying contact speeds and misalignments when properly tuned for three scenarios: pendulum‐based perching, ground perching, and ceiling perching. With its tuning capability, the perching mechanism can alleviate the need for precise motion control for an aerial robot during perching, expanding the applications of aerial robots in areas like environmental monitoring or infrastructure inspection.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• The effect of process parameters during the insertion phase of robotic friction stir welding on axial force

  The International Journal of Advanced Manufacturing Technology · 2025-02-18 · 5 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Flapping dynamics and wing flexibility enhance odor detection in blue bottle flies

  Bioinspiration & Biomimetics · 2025-02-19 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access

  Abstract One of the most ancient and evolutionarily conserved behaviors in the animal kingdom involves utilizing wind-borne odor plumes to track essential elements such as food, mates, and predators. Insects, particularly flies, demonstrate a remarkable proficiency in this behavior, efficiently processing complex odor information encompassing concentrations, direction, and speed through their olfactory system, thereby facilitating effective odor-guided navigation. Recent years have witnessed substantial research explaining the impact of wing flexibility and kinematics on the aerodynamics and flow field physics governing the flight of insects. However, the relationship between the flow field and olfactory functions remains largely unexplored, presenting an attractive frontier with numerous intriguing questions. One such question pertains to whether flies intentionally manipulate the flow field around their antennae using their wing structure and kinematics to augment their olfactory capabilities. To address this question, we first reconstructed the wing kinematics based on high-speed video recordings of wing surface deformation. Subsequently, we simulated the unsteady flow field and odorant transport during the forward flight of blue bottle flies ( Calliphora vomitoria ) by solving the Navier–Stokes equations and odorant advection–diffusion equations using an in-house computational fluid dynamics solver. Our simulation results demonstrated that flexible wings generated greater cycle-averaged aerodynamic forces compared to purely rigid flapping wings, underscoring the aerodynamic advantages of wing flexibility. Additionally, flexible wings produced 25% greater odor intensity, enhancing the insect’s ability to detect and interpret olfactory cues. This study not only advances our understanding of the intricate interplay between wing motion, aerodynamics, and olfactory capabilities in flying insects but also raises intriguing questions about the intentional modulation of flow fields for sensory purposes in other behaviors.

  PublisherDOI

Recent grants

• CPS: Medium: Collaborative Research: Towards optimal robot locomotion in fluids through physics-informed learning with distributed sensing

  NSF · $550k · 2020–2023

• CAREER: Towards Integrated Understanding and Informed Mimicry of Insect Flight Mechanics and Control with Application to Micro Air Vehicles

  NSF · $532k · 2016–2021

• RI: Small: Collaborative Research: Vision-guided Control of Robust Perching: From Biological to Robotic Flyers

  NSF · $250k · 2018–2021

Frequent coauthors

• Xinyan Deng

  Guizhou Normal University

  28 shared

• Haibo Dong

  University of Virginia

  25 shared

• Bret W. Tobalske

  University of Montana

  19 shared

• Junshi Wang

  17 shared

• Nathaniel H. Werner

  Liberty University

  17 shared

• Tyson L. Hedrick

  University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

  13 shared

• Haoxiang Luo

  Vanderbilt University

  12 shared

• Yağiz E. Bayiz

  Pennsylvania State University

  11 shared

Education

• PhD, Mechanical

  Purdue University