Here we report the first sub-milligram flapping wing vehicle which is able to mimic insect wing kinematics. Wing stroke amplitude of 90∘ and wing pitch amplitude of 80∘ is demonstrated. This is also the smallest wing-span (single wing length of 3.5mm) device reported yet and is at the same mass-scale as a fruit fly. Assembly has been made simple and requires gluing together 5 components in contrast to higher part count and intensive assembly of other milligram-scale microrobots. This increases the fabrication speed and success-rate of the fully fabricated device. Low operational voltages (70mV) makes testing further easy and will enable eventual deployment of autonomous sub-milligram aerial vehicles.
@article{arxiv.1908.03203,
title = {Design of the first sub-milligram flapping wing aerial vehicle},
author = {Palak Bhushan and Claire Tomlin},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1908.03203},
year = {2020}
}