A Visualization System for Analysis of Micro Aerial Vehicle Scaled Flapping Wings

This paper presents a visualization system for analysis of micro aerial vehicle (MAV) scaled flapping wings. By synchronizing to the wing under test, multiple devices can be triggered at precise phases in the flapping cycle with a high degree of accuracy and repeatability. The system can control devices such as strobe lights, lasers and cameras to capture wing motion and flow visualization data at the point of interest. The system was developed, then implemented and tested under ideal and real-world conditions to evaluate several aspects of performance. The effectiveness of the system was then demonstrated in a flow visualization experiment, where it was used to capture images of the average airflow around a flapping wing at several wing phases. Performance measurements showed the high accuracy of the system, while flow visualization results demonstrated significant improvements in the quality and accuracy of images when the system was used for analysis of a flapping wing. These results indicate the potential of the developed system to considerably improve visualization analysis of MAV scaled flapping wings.

[1]  J. Gordon Leishman,et al.  Flow Visualization of Micro Air Vehicle Scaled Insect-Based Flapping Wings. , 2005 .

[2]  Max F. Platzer,et al.  Flapping-Wing Propulsion for a Micro Air Vehicle , 2000 .

[3]  Sam Heathcote,et al.  Flexible Flapping Airfoil Propulsion at Zero Freestream Velocity , 2003 .

[4]  Joseph Yan,et al.  A Reinforcement Learning Approach to Lift Generation in Flapping MAVs: Experimental Results , 2007, Proceedings 2007 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation.

[5]  C. Ellington.  Unsteady aerodynamics of insect flight. , 1995, Symposia of the Society for Experimental Biology.

[6]  Mao Sun,et al.  Unsteady aerodynamic forces of a flapping wing , 2004, Journal of Experimental Biology.

[7]  David L. Raney,et al.  Mechanization and Control Concepts for Biologically Inspired Micro Air Vehicles , 2004 .

[8]  Wolfgang Merzkirch,et al.  Flow Visualization, Second Edition , 1987 .

[9]  Thomas J. Mueller,et al.  Development and Operation of UAVs for Military and Civil Applications , 2000 .

[10]  Darryll J. Pines,et al.  Hover Performance of Rotor Blades at Low Reynolds Numbers for Rotary Wing Micro Air Vehicles , 2003 .

[11]  A. DeSimone,et al.  Biological Fluid Dynamics: Swimming at low Reynolds numbers. , 2008 .

[12]  Z. J. Wang.  Vortex shedding and frequency selection in flapping flight , 2000, Journal of Fluid Mechanics.

[13]  D. Lentink,et al.  Novel micro aircraft inspired by insect flight , 2006 .

[14]  R. Ramamurti,et al.  A three-dimensional computational study of the aerodynamic mechanisms of insect flight. , 2002, The Journal of experimental biology.

[15]  M. Jensen.  Biology and physics of locust flight. III. The aerodynamics of locust flight , 1956, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological Sciences.

[16]  Masaki Hamamoto,et al.  Design of Flexible Wing for Flapping Flight by Fluid-Structure Interaction Analysis , 2005, Proceedings of the 2005 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation.

[17]  C. Ellington.  The novel aerodynamics of insect flight: applications to micro-air vehicles. , 1999, The Journal of experimental biology.

[18]  M. Dickinson,et al.  UNSTEADY AERODYNAMIC PERFORMANCE OF MODEL WINGS AT LOW REYNOLDS NUMBERS , 1993 .

[19]  J. Gordon Leishman,et al.  Experimental Studies on Insect-Based Flapping Wings for Micro Hovering Air Vehicles , 2005 .

[20]  Thomas J. Mueller,et al.  AERODYNAMIC MEASUREMENTS AT LOW REYNOLDS NUMBERS , 1982 .

[21]  Y. Tai,et al.  Microbat: A Palm-Sized Electrically Powered Ornithopter , 2001 .

[22]  G V Lauder.  Aerodynamics: Flight of the robofly , 2001, Nature.

[23]  Timothy J. Pedley,et al.  Biological fluid dynamics , 1995 .

[24]  Robert J. Wood,et al.  Towards a 3g crawling robot through the integration of microrobot technologies , 2006, Proceedings 2006 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, 2006. ICRA 2006..

[25]  S.K. Agrawal,et al.  Force and moment characterization of flapping wings for micro air vehicle application , 2005, Proceedings of the 2005, American Control Conference, 2005..