Development of insect thorax based flapping mechanism

Author

Khan, Zaeem ; Steelman, Kyle ; Agrawal, Sunil

Author_Institution

BIOMS/Mech. Eng. Program, Univ. of Delaware, Newark, DE, USA

fYear

2009

fDate

12-17 May 2009

Firstpage

3651

Lastpage

3656

Abstract

Design of a flapping mechanism for flapping wing micro air vehicles (FWMAV) is presented based on a mathematical model of insect thorax. This model also includes an aerodynamic model of flapping wings. Using experiments on dynamically scaled wings and numerical optimization, the mechanism is tuned for peak aerodynamic performance. The thorax model is used to understand the mechanics of the biological flapping mechanism and reveals the significance of rotational stiffness and inertia distribution in flapping wings. Experiments conducted on the actual thorax based mechanism validate theoretical findings and also show significant lift generation capability.

Keywords

aircraft; control system synthesis; numerical analysis; vehicle dynamics; aerodynamic model; biological flapping mechanism; dynamically scaled wings; flapping wing micro air vehicles; inertia distribution; insect thorax; numerical optimization; rotational stiffness; Aerodynamics; Biological system modeling; Capacitive sensors; Exoskeletons; Insects; Kinematics; Mathematical model; Muscles; Thorax; Vehicles;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Robotics and Automation, 2009. ICRA '09. IEEE International Conference on

Conference_Location

Kobe

ISSN

1050-4729

Print_ISBN

978-1-4244-2788-8

Electronic_ISBN

1050-4729

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/ROBOT.2009.5152822

Filename

5152822