Dynamics and flight control of a flapping-wing robotic insect in the presence of wind gusts

Chirarattananon, Pakpong; Chen, Yufeng; Helbling, E. Farrell; Kevin, Y.; Cheng, Richard; Wood, Robert J.

doi:10.1098/rsfs.2016.0080

“…It thus represents a trade-off between clearance and aerodynamic effectiveness. To determine how effectively insect-inspired flapping wings might negate lateral wind, Chirarattananon et al [16] developed a new flight controller with disturbance rejection schemes capable of estimating and stabilizing the robot's position with respect to the ground in 0.8 ms 21 lateral wind. The effectiveness of such flapping wings can be improved by aeroelastic tailoring and morphing them throughout the wingbeat like a bat.…”

Section: Aerial Robotics Advancesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Coevolving advances in animal flight and aerial robotics

Lentink

¹

2017

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Our understanding of animal flight has inspired the design of new aerial robots with more effective flight capacities through the process of biomimetics and bioinspiration. The aerodynamic origin of the elevated performance of flying animals remains, however, poorly understood. In this themed issue, animal flight research and aerial robot development coalesce to offer a broader perspective on the current advances and future directions in these coevolving fields of research. Together, four reviews summarize and 14 reports contribute to our understanding of low Reynolds number flight. This area of applied aerodynamics research is challenging to dissect due to the complicated flow phenomena that include laminarturbulent flow transition, laminar separation bubbles, delayed stall and nonlinear vortex dynamics. Our mechanistic understanding of low Reynolds number flight has perhaps been advanced most by the development of dynamically scaled robot models and new specialized wind tunnel facilities: in particular, the tiltable Lund flight tunnel for animal migration research and the recently developed AFAR hypobaric wind tunnel for high-altitude animal flight studies. These world-class facilities are now complemented with a specialized low Reynolds number wind tunnel for studying the effect of turbulence on animal and robot flight in much greater detail than previously possible. This is particular timely, because the study of flight in extremely laminar versus turbulent flow opens a new frontier in our understanding of animal flight. Advancing this new area will offer inspiration for developing more efficient high-altitude aerial robots and removes roadblocks for aerial robots operating in turbulent urban environments.

show abstract

“…Frontal and lateral inflows contributed to increase lift, whereas drag was found to be linearly proportional to flow speed [9,12,13]. While Chirarattananon et al [14] experimentally showed that the effects of frontal inflows were more pronounced compared with oriented laterally, Jones & Yamaleev [9] revealed that flapping wings can alleviate the effect of moderate or even strong frontal inflows whose mean velocity is comparable with the wing tip velocity. In addition, their numerical results revealed that the mean lift tended to increase when the wing oriented towards the lateral inflow, whereas it decreased when the wing was oriented away from the lateral inflow.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Effects of uniform vertical inflow perturbations on the performance of flapping wings

Mazharmanesh

¹

,

Stallard

²

,

Medina

³

et al. 2021

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Flapping wings have attracted significant interest for use in miniature unmanned flying vehicles. Although numerous studies have investigated the performance of flapping wings under quiescent conditions, effects of freestream disturbances on their performance remain under-explored. In this study, we experimentally investigated the effects of uniform vertical inflows on flapping wings using a Reynolds-scaled apparatus operating in water at Reynolds number ≈ 3600. The overall lift and drag produced by a flapping wing were measured by varying the magnitude of inflow perturbation from J Vert = −1 (downward inflow) to J Vert = 1 (upward inflow), where J Vert is the ratio of the inflow velocity to the wing's velocity. The interaction between flapping wing and downward-oriented inflows resulted in a steady linear reduction in mean lift and drag coefficients, C ¯ L and C ¯ D , with increasing inflow magnitude. While a steady linear increase in C ¯ L and C ¯ D was noted for upward-oriented inflows between 0 < J Vert < 0.3 and J Vert > 0.7, a significant unsteady wing–wake interaction occurred when 0.3 ≤ J Vert < 0.7, which caused large variations in instantaneous forces over the wing and led to a reduction in mean performance. These findings highlight asymmetrical effects of vertically oriented perturbations on the performance of flapping wings and pave the way for development of suitable control strategies.

show abstract

“…On the one hand, multirotors are not energy efficient platforms for long distance/endurance operations, since most of the energy is devoted to lifting their own weight, whereas a fixed or flapping wing vehicle takes advantage of the aerodynamic lift forces generated during forward flight [14,15]. The possibility to glide as birds do [16,17], exploiting the potential energy and the wind gusts [18], extends the flying ability and reduces the potential damages due to crashes or impacts in case of failure. On the other hand, and related to this last point, multirotors are not suitable platforms for close interaction with humans, in terms of safety, due to the propellers [19], whereas the damage that a flapping wing vehicle may cause is relatively low.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Winged Aerial Manipulation Robot with Dual Arm and Tail

Suárez

¹

,

Grau

²

,

Heredia

³

et al. 2020

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This paper presents the design and development of a winged aerial robot with bimanual manipulation capabilities, motivated by the current limitations of aerial manipulators based on multirotor platforms in terms of safety and range/endurance. Since the combination of gliding and flapping wings is more energy efficient in forward flight, we propose a new morphology that exploits this feature and allows the realization of dexterous manipulation tasks once the aerial robot has landed or perched. The paper describes the design, development, and aerodynamic analysis of this winged aerial manipulation robot (WAMR), consisting of a small-scale dual arm used for manipulating and as a morphing wing. The arms, fuselage, and tail are covered by a nylon cloth that acts as a cap, similar to a kite. The three joints of the arms (shoulder yaw and pitch, elbow pitch) can be used to control the surface area and orientation and thus the aerodynamic wrenches induced over the cloth. The proposed concept design is extended to a flapping-wing aerial robot built with smart servo actuators and a similar frame structure, allowing the generation of different flapping patterns exploiting the embedded servo controller. Experimental and simulation results carried out with these two prototypes evaluate the manipulation capability and the possibility of gliding and flying.

show abstract

Dynamics and flight control of a flapping-wing robotic insect in the presence of wind gusts

Cited by 43 publications

References 60 publications

Coevolving advances in animal flight and aerial robotics

Coevolving advances in animal flight and aerial robotics

Effects of uniform vertical inflow perturbations on the performance of flapping wings

Winged Aerial Manipulation Robot with Dual Arm and Tail

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About