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The mechanical complexity of flapping wings, their unsteady aerodynamic flow, and challenge of making measurements at the scale of a sub-gram flapping-wing flying insect robot (FIR) make its behavior hard to predict. Knowing the precise…
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…
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…
Aerobat is a bat-inspired flapping-wing robot with a wing gait generate by the computational structure, a planar linkage of carbon fiber links driven by a single motor. This design minimizes weight but couples both wings to a shared input…
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…
Whenever a flapping robot moves along a trajectory it experiences some vibration about its mean path. Even for a hovering case, a flier experiences such vibration due to the oscillatory nature of the aerodynamic forces. In this paper we…
Tiny flying insects of body lengths under 2 mm use the `clap-and-fling' mechanism with bristled wings for lift augmentation and drag reduction at chord-based Reynolds number ($Re$) on $\mathcal{O}$(10). We examine wing-wing interaction of…
Aerial insects exhibit highly agile maneuvers such as sharp braking, saccades, and body flips under disturbance. In contrast, insect-scale aerial robots are limited to tracking non-aggressive trajectories with small body acceleration. This…
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…
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…
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 aerial environment in the operating domain of small-scale natural and artificial flapping wing fliers is highly complex, unsteady and generally turbulent. Considering flapping flight in an unsteady wind environment with a periodically…
Flapping-wing insects, birds, and robots are thought to offset the high power cost of oscillatory wing motion by using elastic elements for energy storage and return. Insects possess highly resilient elastic regions in their flight anatomy…
This paper discusses the wing inertial effects on stability of pitch motion of hovering insects. The paper also presents a dynamic model appropriate for using averaging techniques and discusses the pitch stability results derived from the…
Here we present the design of an insect-scale microrobot that generates lift by spinning its wings. This is in contrast to most other microrobot designs at this size scale which rely on flapping wings to produce lift. The robot has a wing…
Wing articulation is critical for efficient flight of bird- and bat-sized animals. Inspired by the flight of $\textit{Cynopterus brachyotis}$, the lesser short-nosed fruit bat, we built a two-degree-of-freedom flapping wing platform with…
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…
A hover-capable insect-inspired flying robot that can remain long in the air has shown its potential use for both confined indoor and outdoor applications to complete assigned tasks. In this letter, we report improvements in the flight…
Accurate estimation of aerodynamic forces is essential for advancing the control, modeling, and design of flapping-wing aerial robots with dynamic morphing capabilities. In this paper, we investigate two distinct methodologies for force…
Using a flapping robot in a wind tunnel, we show that flapping faster amplifies existing longitudinal static stability (focusing on the pitch stiffness) and can even make an unstable flier stable. We show that stability for a flapper is not…