MEMS Based Micro Aerial Vehicles

Designing a flapping wing insect robot requires understanding of insect flight mechanisms, wing kinematics and aerodynamic forces. These subsystems are interconnected and their dependence on one another affects the overall performance. Additionally it requires an artificial muscle like actuator and transmission to power the wings. Several kinds of actuators and mechanisms are candidates for this application with their own strengths and weaknesses. This article provides an overview of the insect scaled flight mechanism along with discussion of various methods to achieve the Micro Aerial Vehicle (MAV) flight. Ongoing projects in Chalmers is aimed at developing a low cost and low manufacturing time MAV. The MAV design considerations and design specifications are mentioned. The wings are manufactured using 3D printed carbon fiber and are under experimental study. © Published under licence by IOP Publishing Ltd.

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

[2]  S. Shankar Sastry,et al.  Flapping flight for biomimetic robotic insects: part I-system modeling , 2006, IEEE Transactions on Robotics.

[3]  Robert J. Wood,et al.  Energetics of flapping-wing robotic insects: towards autonomous hovering flight , 2010, 2010 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems.

[4]  J. P. Whitney,et al.  Conceptual design of flapping-wing micro air vehicles , 2012, Bioinspiration & biomimetics.

[5]  Tyson L. Hedrick,et al.  Recent developments in the study of insect flight , 2015 .

[6]  M. Dickinson,et al.  The control of flight force by a flapping wing: lift and drag production. , 2001, The Journal of experimental biology.

[7]  Z. J. Wang,et al.  Passive wing pitch reversal in insect flight , 2007, Journal of Fluid Mechanics.

[8]  Alan J. Thomson,et al.  Dynamics of a bistable system: The click mechanism in dipteran flight , 1977 .

[9]  Metin Sitti,et al.  Simulation and analysis of a passive pitch reversal flapping wing mechanism for an aerial robotic platform , 2008, 2008 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems.

[10]  Robert J. Wood,et al.  Stroke plane deviation for a microrobotic fly , 2010, 2010 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems.

[11]  R. Fearing,et al.  Optimal energy density piezoelectric bending actuators , 2005 .

[12]  Robert J. Wood,et al.  High-throughput study of flapping wing aerodynamics for biological and robotic applications , 2014, 2014 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems.

[13]  Gih-Keong Lau,et al.  “Clicking” compliant mechanism for flapping-wing micro aerial vehicle , 2012, 2012 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems.