Developing and Analysing an Electromechanical Model of a Bio-Inspired Flapping Wing Mini UAV

The purpose of this paper is to describe and analyse an electromechanical model of a mini flapping wing mechanism for the purpose of system optimisation. The system comprises of a small DC motor connected to a voltage source, a gearbox and a slider crank that drives two wings. The DC gearmotor is modelled considering its both mechanical and electrical components. An equivalent viscous damper is considered to model the mechanical losses of the gearmotor. The crank mechanism is assumed massless and the inertia of the wings only considered in the model. The aerodynamic drag and lift are modelled using an equivalent viscous damping model as an energy sink. The parameters of the system are estimated using published experimental data and manufacturer datasheets for the corresponding DC gearmotor. The energy efficiency as the ratio of aerodynamic power to the input electrical power of the system and also the aerodynamic power are used as two measures to evaluate the system performance.

[1]  Robert J. Wood,et al.  Dipteran-Insect-Inspired Thoracic Mechanism With Nonlinear Stiffness to Save Inertial Power of Flapping-Wing Flight , 2014, IEEE Transactions on Robotics.

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

[3]  Ronald S. Fearing,et al.  Efficient resonant drive of flapping-wing robots , 2009, 2009 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems.

[4]  Robert J. Wood,et al.  Science, technology and the future of small autonomous drones , 2015, Nature.

[6]  Ronald S. Fearing,et al.  High lift force with 275 Hz wing beat in MFI , 2007, 2007 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems.

[7]  Sunil Kumar Agrawal,et al.  Design of flapping mechanisms based on transverse bending phenomena in insects , 2006, Proceedings 2006 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, 2006. ICRA 2006..

[8]  Sunil K. Agrawal,et al.  Biologically Inspired Design Of Small Flapping Wing Air Vehicles Using Four-Bar Mechanisms And Quasi-steady Aerodynamics , 2005 .

[9]  Sunil Kumar Agrawal,et al.  Design and Optimization of a Biologically Inspired Flapping Mechanism for Flapping Wing Micro Air Vehicles , 2007, Proceedings 2007 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation.

[10]  M. Goldfarb,et al.  The Development of Elastodynamic Components for Piezoelectrically Actuated Flapping Micro-Air Vehicles , 2002 .

[11]  Robert J. Wood,et al.  Dynamically tuned design of the MFI thorax , 2002, Proceedings 2002 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (Cat. No.02CH37292).

[12]  Guowei Cai,et al.  A Survey of Small-Scale Unmanned Aerial Vehicles: Recent Advances and Future Development Trends , 2014 .

[13]  Ephrahim Garcia,et al.  Elastodynamic locomotion in mesoscale robotic insects , 1999, Smart Structures.