Physical Intelligence Conference Paper 2015

Platform design and tethered flight of a motor-driven flapping-wing system

Thumb ticker sm metin eth vertical small
Physical Intelligence
Guest Researcher
Thumb ticker sm lindsey
Physical Intelligence
Senior Researcher at 3M
Publications toc

In this work, we examine two design modifications to a tethered motor-driven flapping-wing system. Previously, we had demonstrated a simple mechanism utilizing a linear transmission for resonant operation and direct drive of the wing flapping angle for control. The initial two-wing system had a weight of 2.7 grams and a maximum lift-to-weight ratio of 1.4. While capable of vertical takeoff, in open-loop flight it demonstrated instability and pitch oscillations at the wing flapping frequency, leading to flight times of only a few wing strokes. Here the effect of vertical wing offset as well as an alternative multi-wing layout is investigated and experimentally tested with newly constructed prototypes. With only a change in vertical wing offset, stable open-loop flight of the two-wing flapping system is shown to be theoretically possible, but difficult to achieve with our current design and operating parameters. Both of the new two and four-wing systems, however, prove capable of flying to the end of the tether, with the four-wing system prototype eliminating disruptive wing beat oscillations.

Author(s): Hines, Lindsey and Colmenares, David and Sitti, Metin
Book Title: Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 2015 IEEE International Conference on
Pages: 5838--5845
Year: 2015
Month: May
Day: 26
Bibtex Type: Conference Paper (inproceedings)
DOI: 10.1109/ICRA.2015.7140016
Electronic Archiving: grant_archive
Organization: IEEE

BibTex

@inproceedings{hines2015platform,
  title = {Platform design and tethered flight of a motor-driven flapping-wing system},
  booktitle = {Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 2015 IEEE International Conference on},
  abstract = {In this work, we examine two design modifications to a tethered motor-driven flapping-wing system. Previously, we had demonstrated a simple mechanism utilizing a linear transmission for resonant operation and direct drive of the wing flapping angle for control. The initial two-wing system had a weight of 2.7 grams and a maximum lift-to-weight ratio of 1.4. While capable of vertical takeoff, in open-loop flight it demonstrated instability and pitch oscillations at the wing flapping frequency, leading to flight times of only a few wing strokes. Here the effect of vertical wing offset as well as an alternative multi-wing layout is investigated and experimentally tested with newly constructed prototypes. With only a change in vertical wing offset, stable open-loop flight of the two-wing flapping system is shown to be theoretically possible, but difficult to achieve with our current design and operating parameters. Both of the new two and four-wing systems, however, prove capable of flying to the end of the tether, with the four-wing system prototype eliminating disruptive wing beat oscillations.},
  pages = {5838--5845},
  organization = {IEEE},
  month = may,
  year = {2015},
  slug = {hines2015platform},
  author = {Hines, Lindsey and Colmenares, David and Sitti, Metin},
  month_numeric = {5}
}