Design and performance of micromolded plastic butterfly wings on butterfly ornithopter

Author

Tanaka, Hiroto ; Matsumoto, Kiyoshi ; Shimoyama, Isao

Author_Institution

Dept. of Mechano-Inf., Univ. of Tokyo, Tokyo

fYear

2008

fDate

22-26 Sept. 2008

Firstpage

3095

Lastpage

3100

Abstract

Three types of artificial butterfly wings were fabricated for investigating the morphological function of actual butterfly wings. They consist of a thin polymer membrane and micromolded polyurethane veins. The planar shape and venation of one type were the same as those of a swallowtail butterfly, and those of the other two were different. The effect of the distribution of stiffness over the wings by the veins on flight characteristics during free forward flight was investigated using an ornithopter and the three different types of wing. The overall aerodynamic coefficients were the highest for the wings with veins the same as those of a swallowtail butterfly, indicating that the veins enable slow forward flight.

Keywords

microrobots; mobile robots; aerodynamic coefficients; artificial butterfly wings; butterfly ornithopter; flight characteristics; free forward flight; micromolded plastic butterfly wings; micromolded polyurethane veins; morphological function; swallowtail butterfly; thin polymer membrane; Aerodynamics; Biomembranes; Force; Rubber; Shape; Silicon; Veins;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Intelligent Robots and Systems, 2008. IROS 2008. IEEE/RSJ International Conference on

Conference_Location

Nice

Print_ISBN

978-1-4244-2057-5

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/IROS.2008.4651065

Filename

4651065