Related papers: First free-flight flow visualisation of a flapping…
Insects and hummingbirds exhibit extraordinary flight capabilities and can simultaneously master seemingly conflicting goals: stable hovering and aggressive maneuvering, unmatched by small scale man-made vehicles. Flapping Wing Micro Air…
Tried-and-true flapping wing robot simulation is essential in developing flapping wing mechanisms and algorithms. This paper presents a novel application-oriented flapping wing platform, highly compatible with various mechanical designs and…
The flapping-wing aerial vehicle (FWAV) is a new type of flying robot that mimics the flight mode of birds and insects. However, FWAVs have their special characteristics of less load capacity and short endurance time, so that most existing…
We designed and built a three degrees-of-freedom (DOF) flapping wing robot, Flapperoo, to study the aerodynamic benefits of wing folding and twisting. Forces and moments of this physical model are measured in wind tunnel tests over a…
Trajectory visualization and animation play critical roles in robotics research. However, existing data visualization and animation tools often lack flexibility, scalability, and versatility, resulting in limited capability to fully explore…
Flying animals resort to fast, large-degree-of-freedom motion of flapping wings, a key feature that distinguishes them from rotary or fixed-winged robotic fliers with limited motion of aerodynamic surfaces. However, flapping-wing…
Stability of flapping flight, a natural requirement for flying insects, is one of the major challenges for designing micro aerial vehicles (MAVs). To better understand how a flying insect could stabilize itself during hover, we have…
In this work, we have performed numerical simulations of the flapping motion of a rectangular wing in a three-dimensional flow field using the discrete vortex method (DVM). The DVM method is computationally more convenient because it does…
Biological flapping wing fliers operate efficiently and robustly in a wide range of flight conditions and are a great source of inspiration to engineers. The unsteady aerodynamics of flapping-wings are dominated by large-scale vortical…
Inspired by the wake-surfing nature of animals, this study aims to understand the aerodynamic force variation on a wing surfing in an unsteady 2-D wake. Wind tunnel experiments were conducted using Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV) and force…
Bio-inspired methods can provide efficient solutions to perform autonomous landing for Micro Air Vehicles (MAVs). Flying insects such as honeybees perform vertical landings by keeping flow divergence constant. This leads to an exponential…
The development of automatic perception systems and techniques for bio-inspired flapping-wing robots is severely hampered by the high technical complexity of these platforms and the installation of onboard sensors and electronics. Besides,…
One of the motivations for exploring flapping-wing aerial robotic systems is to seek energy reduction, by maintaining manoeuvrability, compared to conventional unmanned aerial systems. A Flapping Wing Flying Robot (FWFR) can glide in…
With the emergence of new flapping-wing micro aerial vehicle (FWMAV) designs, a need for extensive and advanced mission capabilities arises. FWMAVs try to adapt and emulate the flight features of birds and flying insects. While current…
Autonomous quadrotor flight in confined spaces such as pipes and tunnels presents significant challenges due to unsteady, self-induced aerodynamic disturbances. Very recent advances have enabled flight in such conditions, but they either…
Hummingbirds and insects achieve outstanding flight performance by adapting their flapping motion to the flight requirements. Their wing kinematics can change from smooth flapping to highly dynamic waveforms, generating unsteady aerodynamic…
Wings of flying animals can not only generate lift and control torques but also can sense their surroundings. Such dual functions of sensing and actuation coupled in one element are particularly useful for small sized bio-inspired robotic…
In systems control, the dynamics of a system are governed by modulating its inputs to achieve a desired outcome. For example, to control the thrust of a quad-copter propeller the controller modulates its rotation rate, relying on a…
Fluidic locomotion of flapping Micro Aerial Vehicles (MAVs) can be very complex, particularly when the rules from insect flight dynamics (fast flapping dynamics and light wings) are not applicable. In these situations, widely used averaging…
Inverted landing is a challenging feat to perform in aerial robots, especially without external positioning. However, it is routinely performed by biological fliers such as bees, flies, and bats. Our previous observations of landing…