A Kind of Large-Sized Flapping Wing Robotic Bird: Design and Experiments

Abstract

A flapping wing aerial vehicle (FAV) has advantages in the aerodynamic performance, flight flexibility and flight efficiency than the fixed wing and rotary wing flyers. It can be used for military investigation, environment exploration and life rescue. Considering long-distance flight and large payload ratio, we developed a large-sized flapping wing robotic bird. The structure and size comes from that of large-sized birds. The mechanism is first designed by bionics. It has a relatively simple mechanical configuration. Then, the kinematics model is derived to analyze the flapping properties. The sensor system, the control system and the software are also designed according to the requirement of flying control. Then, a prototype was developed. It has a span of 1.1 m, and only weighs 455 g. Finally, a lot of outdoors experiments are performed under nature weather conditions. The continuous flight time is more than 15 min. By analyzing the experimental data, we have found out some interesting phenomena and results.