Design of Wing Root Rotation Mechanism for Dragonfly-Inspired Micro Air Vehicle

Abstract

This paper proposes a wing root control mechanism inspired by the drag-based system of a dragonfly. The previous mechanisms for generating wing rotations have high controllability of the angle of attack, but the structures are either too complex or too simple, and the control of the angle of attack is insufficient. In order to overcome these disadvantages, a wing root control mechanism was designed to improve the control of the angle of attack by controlling the mean angle of attack in a passive rotation mechanism implemented in a simple structure. Links between the proposed mechanism and a spatial four-bar link-based flapping mechanism were optimized for the design, and a prototype was produced by a 3D printer. The kinematics and aerodynamics were measured using the prototype, a high-speed camera, and an F/T sensor. In the measured kinematics, the flapping amplitude was found to be similar to the design value, and the mean angle of attack increased by approximately 30° at a wing root angle of 0°. In the aerodynamic analysis, the drag-based system implemented using the wing root control mechanism reduced the amplitude of the force in the horizontal direction to approximately 0.15 N and 0.1 N in the downstroke and upstroke, respectively, compared with the lift-based system. In addition, at an inclined stroke angle, the force in the horizontal direction increased greatly when the wing root angle was 0° at the inclined stroke angle, while the force in the vertical direction increased greatly at a wing root angle of 30°. This means that the flight mode can be controlled by controlling the wing root angle. As a result, it is shown that the wing root control mechanism can be applied to the MAV (micro air vehicle) to stabilize hovering better than the MAV using a lift-based system and can control the flight mode without changing the posture.

Towards Bio-Inspiration, Development, and Manufacturing of a Flapping-Wing Micro Air Vehicle

“…As previously mentioned, a bumblebee wing shape is considered for the four wings. This selection is based on the studies carried out by Hassanalian et al [18,19] where seven different insect wings were studied and compared to determine the optimal wing shape for hovering and forward flight. For the hovering flight study, a quasi-steady theory is employed to determine the optimal wing shape for two cases, one considering all wings to have an equal wing surface and one with all wings having an equal wingspan [29].…”

“…There is a large variety of actuation mechanisms used in the manufacturing of drones [10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19]. When selecting these mechanisms, many crucial factors must be considered and compared to select the appropriate actuator for the desired drone design.…”

Aerodynamic Performance of Quadrotor UAV with Non-Planar Rotors

“…In order to study the mutual interaction between the rotors, various combinations with different spacing (1 d-2 d) and tilt angle (0-50 deg) are numerically simulated with ANSYS. The N-S equation model is applied to analyze the characteristics of the external flow field [29]. Also, mesh refinement is performed on four rotor regions with a large gradient of physical field flow.…”

Special Feature on Advanced Mobile Robotics

“…It uses a sliding mode observer to estimate the fault magnitude and location. Inspired by the flight mechanism of the insect dragonfly, a wing root control mechanism was introduced to the MAV (micro air vehicle) stabilizing hovering, by Jang and Yang [24]. It was shown that the mechanism can control the flight mode easily.…”