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Recent manufacturing advances have allowed for the creation of gram and sub-gram insect-scale flapping robots. Most dynamic models of such robots to date have either assumed stroke-averaged forces or did not account for body motion. In order to design more robust and capable control methods, this paper incorporates blade element theory with a rigid-body dynamic model to calculate instantaneous aerodynamic...
The flapping microrobot known as RoboBee is the first robot to demonstrate insect-scale flight, as well as the most capable flying robotic insect to date. Controlled hover, trajectory-following, and perching have been accomplished by means of onboard sensors and actuators fabricated with the robot using a “pop-up book MEMS” process based on smart composite microstructures. This paper presents a RoboBee...
Without sufficient payload capacity to carry necessary electronic components, flying robots at the scale of insects cannot fly autonomously. Using a simple scaling heuristic to determine a few salient vehicle properties, we develop a vehicle design that possesses the requisite payload capacity for the full suite of required components for control autonomy. We construct the vehicle using state-of-the-art...
The Harvard Robobee is a fly-sized aerial vehicle that can perform controlled flight maneuvers. But this robot is unable to control its yaw or heading angle to a desired value. Motivated by this deficiency, we propose a new method to produce yaw-axis rotations. Termed wriggle-steering, it consists of driving body oscillations around its two other rotational axes. Because no torque is applied directly...
Despite having achieved unconstrained stable flight, the insect-scale flapping-wing robot is still tethered for power and control. Towards the goal of operating a biologically-inspired robot autonomously outside of laboratory conditions. In this paper, we simulate outdoor disturbances in the laboratory setting and investigate the effects of wind gusts on the flight dynamics of a millimeter-scale flapping...
The design of flapping wing robots and the study of flapping wing flyers requires a detailed knowledge of how wings interact with the surrounding fluid. However, the unsteady nature of fluid-structure interactions during flapping wing flight render analytical design of wing shapes and motion kinematics difficult. We propose that flapping wing micro aerial vehicle (MAV) design will benefit from a complimentary,...
A flapping-wing micro air vehicle was built that mimics the control strategy utilized by fruit flies which indirectly modulate wing angle of attack to generate yaw torques. This prototype could also generate roll torques by oscillating the wing hinge at the flapping frequency with an appropriate phase. The roll, yaw and pitch torque generation capability was characterized using a custom single-axis...
We implement a 2D computational model to investigate the unsteady aerodynamic effects not captured by classical quasi-steady models. We compare numerical simulation results, experimental measurements and quasi-steady predictions to demonstrate the strength of the numerical tool in identifying unsteady fluid mechanisms and improving propulsive efficiency of flapping wing robots. In particular, this...
Inspired by the agility of flying insects and the recent development on an insect-scale aerial vehicle, we propose a single-loop adaptive flight control suite designed with an emphasis on the ability to track dynamic trajectories as a step towards the goal of performing acrobatic maneuvers as observed in real insects. Instead of the conventional approach of having cascaded control loops, the proposed...
Control of insect-scale flapping-wing robots is challenging due to weight constraints and inherent instabilities. Instead of adding more actuators to increase the controllability of the flapping-wing robot, we use a single actuator to drive a system of mechanical linkages to cause bilaterally asymmetric changes in the wing hinge spring rest angle of the left and right wings. We show in simulation...
Experimentally collected flight dynamics data of flapping-wing microrobots reveals several characteristics that cannot be captured by the information gathered from static experiments. For an insect-sized flapping-wing micro air vehicle with air dampers, we show that a physics-based quasi-steady aerodynamic model is able to predict the flight dynamics with reasonable accuracy. The proposed model is...
The Harvard RoboBee is the first insect-scale cflapping-wing robot weighing less than 100 mg that is able to lift its own weight. However, when flown without guide wires, this vehicle quickly tumbles after takeoff because of instability in its dynamics. Here, we show that by adding aerodynamic dampers, we can can alter the vehicle's dynamics to stabilize its upright orientation. We provide an analysis...
Flapping-wing robots typically include numerous nonlinear elements, such as nonlinear geometric and aerodynamic components. For an insect-sized flapping-wing micro air vehicle (FWMAV), we show that a linearized model is sufficient to predict system behavior with reasonable accuracy over a large operating range, not just locally around the linearization state. The theoretical model is verified against...
Wing motion in most flapping-wing micro air vehicles (MAVs) is restricted to a flat stroke plane in order to simplify analysis and mechanism design. An MAV actuation and transmission design capable of controlling flapping motions and deviations from the mean stroke plane using relatively simple modifications to a proven design is presented. This allows preliminary investigation into more power-efficient...
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