From Studying Real Hummingbirds to Designing Hummingbird-Like Robots—A Literature Review

Yanghai Nan,Bei Peng,Yi Chen,Don Mcglinchey

doi:10.1109/access.2019.2939491

Abstract

In this paper, the interpretation of hovering flight for hummingbirds is studied from a hummingbird morphology perspective (muscle and skeleton) including weight distribution, followed by a discussion of hovering aerodynamics. Next, by studying the scale laws, geometry similarity, and statistical analysis on wing parameters, the parametric relation between wing performances and weight is studied, followed by flapping wing micro autonomous drones (FWMADs) design. The efficiency of the designed wings based on the scaling law is verified by flying test. Material difference and methods of design are summarized. Last, the morphology of bird's tails is presented, and then the designs of tails are introduced, followed by discussion of tail performances. The results show that the tail could be predicted to apply to the stability of hovering twin-wing FWMADs. The current studies provide a simple but powerful guideline for biologists and engineers who study the morphology of hummingbirds and design FWMADs.

Highlights

Hummingbirds are one of the few extensively studied vertebrate species
Certain insect-like flapping wing micro autonomous drones (FWMADs) are developed based on these flight mechanisms, such as Micro Mechanical Fly [18], Harvard Robobee [19], KUBeetle [20], DelFly [21], TL-Flowerfly [22] and four wings aerial robotic flapper [23]
We observe that the three relations do not follow the rules induced by geometrical similarity

Summary

INTRODUCTION

Hummingbirds are one of the few extensively studied vertebrate species. They fly vocal agile, maneuverable and in particular hovering when feeding at flowers. Certain insect-like FWMADs are developed based on these flight mechanisms, such as Micro Mechanical Fly [18], Harvard Robobee [19], KUBeetle [20], DelFly [21], TL-Flowerfly [22] and four wings aerial robotic flapper [23]. The birds, excluding hummingbirds, flap their wings to balance the weight, and the circulations of strokes posed to generate the lift during the downstroke, whereas the drag is produced during the upstroke. The study of hummingbirds’ morphologies is quite necessary and useful This will help to understand the muscle kinematics in flight, skeleton structure and their aerodynamic mechanism, and benefit from inspired FWMADs’ development. A review of the morphology of the hummingbird in hovering flight is studied including muscle, construction of skeleton, aerodynamic in hovering, wing performance and tail performance. To explore the function of the tail, the inspired tail is introduced

MUSCLE OF HUMMINGBIRD

AERODYNAMICS OF HUMMINGBIRDS

MORPHOLOGY OF WINGS AND

VIII. CONCLUSION