Related papers: Repeatable Energy-Efficient Perching for Flapping-…
There are various desired capabilities to create aerial forest-traversing robots capable of monitoring both biological and abiotic data. The features range from multi-functionality, robustness, and adaptability. These robots have to weather…
Flow visualisations are essential to better understand the unsteady aerodynamics of flapping wing flight. The issues inherent to animal experiments, such as poor controllability and unnatural flapping when tethered, can be avoided by using…
Insect-scale micro-aerial vehicles, especially lightweight, flapping-wing robots, are becoming increasingly important for safe motion sensing in spatially constrained environments such as living spaces. However, yaw control using flapping…
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 previous research, various types of aerial robots equipped with perching mechanisms have been developed to extend operational time. However, most existing perching methods adopt either an upward or downward approach, making it difficult…
Electroadhesion (EA) provides electrically switchable adhesion and is a promising mechanism for perching micro aerial robots on smooth surfaces. However, practical implementations of soft and stretchable EA pads for aerial perching remain…
This paper introduces a novel compliant mechanism combining lightweight and energy dissipation for aerial physical interaction. Weighting 400~g at take-off, the mechanism is actuated in the forward body direction, enabling precise position…
Here we report the first sub-milligram flapping wing vehicle which is able to mimic insect wing kinematics. Wing stroke amplitude of 90$^\circ$ and wing pitch amplitude of 80$^\circ$ is demonstrated. This is also the smallest wing-span…
The aim of this paper is to design a new type of grasping and perching unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), called Flexbee, which features a soft vector-propulsion nozzle (SVPN). Compared to previous UAVs, Flexbee integrates flight, grasping, and…
Flying vertebrates exhibit sophisticated wingbeat kinematics. Their specialized forelimbs allow for the wing morphing motion to couple with the flapping motion during their level flight, Previous flyable bionic platforms have successfully…
Contrary to the stunning feats observed in birds of prey, aerial manipulation and grasping with flying robots still lack versatility and agility. Conventional approaches using rigid manipulators require precise positioning and are subject…
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…
Flapping-wing robots offer significant versatility; however, achieving efficient multi-modal locomotion remains challenging. This paper presents the design, modeling, and experimentation of a novel tailless flapping-wing robot with three…
Unmanned aerial-aquatic vehicles (UAAVs) can operate both in the air and underwater, giving them broad application prospects. Inspired by the dual-function wings of puffins, we propose a UAAV with amphibious wings to address the challenge…
Natural selection has tuned many flying and swimming animals across different species to share the same narrow design space for optimal high-efficient and energy-saving locomotion, e.g., their dimensionless Strouhal numbers St that relate…
Flying insects can perform rapid, sophisticated maneuvers like backflips, sharp banked turns, and in-flight collision recovery. To emulate these in aerial robots weighing less than a gram, known as flying insect robots (FIRs), a fast and…
Aerial insects can effortlessly navigate dense vegetation, whereas similarly sized aerial robots typically depend on offboard sensors and computation to maintain stable flight. This disparity restricts insect-scale robots to operation…
This paper discusses a low-cost, open-source and open-hardware design and performance evaluation of a low-speed, multi-fan wind system dedicated to micro air vehicle (MAV) testing. In addition, a set of experiments with a flapping wing MAV…
Unmanned micro aerial vehicle research is an active area of development due to the vast potential applications. Prior work towards realizing flapping flight has achieved some success however they have relied heavily upon the use of rotary…
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…