Physische Intelligenz Conference Paper 2015

Platform design and tethered flight of a motor-driven flapping-wing system

Publications toc

In this work, we examine two design modifications to a tethered motor-driven flapping-wing system. Previously, we had demonstrated a simple mechanism utilizing a linear transmission for resonant operation and direct drive of the wing flapping angle for control. The initial two-wing system had a weight of 2.7 grams and a maximum lift-to-weight ratio of 1.4. While capable of vertical takeoff, in open-loop flight it demonstrated instability and pitch oscillations at the wing flapping frequency, leading to flight times of only a few wing strokes. Here the effect of vertical wing offset as well as an alternative multi-wing layout is investigated and experimentally tested with newly constructed prototypes. With only a change in vertical wing offset, stable open-loop flight of the two-wing flapping system is shown to be theoretically possible, but difficult to achieve with our current design and operating parameters. Both of the new two and four-wing systems, however, prove capable of flying to the end of the tether, with the four-wing system prototype eliminating disruptive wing beat oscillations.

Author(s): Hines, Lindsey and Colmenares, David and Sitti, Metin
Book Title: Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 2015 IEEE International Conference on
Pages: 5838--5845
Year: 2015
Month: May
Day: 26
Bibtex Type: Conference Paper (inproceedings)
DOI: 10.1109/ICRA.2015.7140016
Electronic Archiving: grant_archive
Organization: IEEE

BibTex

@inproceedings{hines2015platform,
  title = {Platform design and tethered flight of a motor-driven flapping-wing system},
  booktitle = {Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 2015 IEEE International Conference on},
  abstract = {In this work, we examine two design modifications to a tethered motor-driven flapping-wing system. Previously, we had demonstrated a simple mechanism utilizing a linear transmission for resonant operation and direct drive of the wing flapping angle for control. The initial two-wing system had a weight of 2.7 grams and a maximum lift-to-weight ratio of 1.4. While capable of vertical takeoff, in open-loop flight it demonstrated instability and pitch oscillations at the wing flapping frequency, leading to flight times of only a few wing strokes. Here the effect of vertical wing offset as well as an alternative multi-wing layout is investigated and experimentally tested with newly constructed prototypes. With only a change in vertical wing offset, stable open-loop flight of the two-wing flapping system is shown to be theoretically possible, but difficult to achieve with our current design and operating parameters. Both of the new two and four-wing systems, however, prove capable of flying to the end of the tether, with the four-wing system prototype eliminating disruptive wing beat oscillations.},
  pages = {5838--5845},
  organization = {IEEE},
  month = may,
  year = {2015},
  slug = {hines2015platform},
  author = {Hines, Lindsey and Colmenares, David and Sitti, Metin},
  month_numeric = {5}
}