Flapping-wing Robotic Insects Research Articles

Dynamics and flight control of a flapping-wing robotic insect in the presence of wind gusts.

With the goal of operating a biologically inspired robot autonomously outside of laboratory conditions, in this paper, we simulated wind disturbances in a laboratory setting and investigated the effects of gusts on the flight dynamics of a millimetre-scale flapping-wing robot. Simplified models describing the disturbance effects on the robot's dynamics are proposed, together with two disturbance rejection schemes capable of estimating and compensating for the disturbances. The proposed methods are experimentally verified. The results show that these strategies reduced the root-mean-square position errors by more than 50% when the robot was subject to 80 cm s-1 horizontal wind. The analysis of flight data suggests that modulation of wing kinematics to stabilize the flight in the presence of wind gusts may indirectly contribute an additional stabilizing effect, reducing the time-averaged aerodynamic drag experienced by the robot. A benchtop experiment was performed to provide further support for this observed phenomenon.

Corrigendum to A Review of Fabrication Options and Power Electronics for Flapping-wing Robotic Insects

Corrigendum to A Review of Fabrication Options and Power Electronics for Flapping-wing Robotic Insects

A Review of Fabrication Options and Power Electronics for Flapping-Wing Robotic Insects

Flapping-wing robotic insects are novel micro air vehicles (MAVs) inspired from biological insects in order to achieve a small size, high manoeuvrability and super remote ability. Such MAVs are centimetre scale flying robots with a number of applications, including exploration, environmental monitoring, rescue and reconnaissance. Due to the strict weight and power requirements of MAVs, the power electronics topologies need to be considered seriously. This paper describes state of the art power electronics topologies suitable for driving fl This -wing robotic insects. Comparisons are made in the resulting configurations of MAVs across several key metrics to estimate their performance. Discussion on the effect of performance gains in various power electronic topologies are abridged and presented.

Passive Aerodynamic Drag Balancing in a Flapping-Wing Robotic Insect

Flapping-wing robotic platforms based on Dipteran insects have demonstrated lift to weight ratios greater than 1, but research into regulating the aerodynamic forces produced by their wings has largely focused on active wing trajectory control. In an alternate approach, a flapping-wing drivetrain design that passively balances aerodynamic drag torques is presented. A discussion of the dynamic properties of this millimeter-scale underactuated planar linkage accompanies an experimental test of an at-scale device. This mechanism introduces a novel strategy for regulating forces and torques from flapping wings, using passive mechanical elements to potentially simplify control systems for mass and power limited flapping-wing robotic platforms.

A novel multi-axis force sensor for microrobotics applications

High performance force sensors often encounter the conflicting requirements of finesensitivity and wide bandwidth. While there is an intrinsic tradeoff between thesetwo metrics that cannot be physically avoided for any force transducer, throughproper optimization the product of these two can be maximized. Similarly, therequirements of multiple sensing axes and overall compactness are also often at odds.This paper describes a novel design, simple method of fabrication, and thoroughanalysis of a high performance two-axis force sensor. We conclude with an exampleapplication: measuring the lift and drag forces from a flapping-wing robotic insect.