Wing transmission for a micromechanical flying insect

Abstract

Flapping wings provide unmatched maneuverability for flying micro-robots. Recent advances in modelling insect aerodynamics show that adequate wing rotation at the end of the stroke is essential for generating adequate flight forces. W e developed a thorax structure using four bar frames combined with an extensible fan-fold wing to provide adequate wing stroke and rotation. Flow measurements on a scale model of the beating wing show promising aerodynamics. Calculations using a simple resonant mechanical circuit model show that piezoelectric actuators can generate SUBcient power, force and stroke to drive the wings at 150 Hz.

Evolving Vision-Based Flying Robots

“…The energy is provided by a Lithium-Ion battery, which lasts more than 3 hours under normal operation, during evolutionary runs. For purpose of analysis, the evolutionary algorithm and spiking circuits are implemented on the desktop computer which exchanges sensory data and motor commands with the blimp every 100 ms. 2 In these experiments, a simple linear camera is attached in front of the gondola ( figure 3), pointing forward. The fish-eye-view lens gives a horizontal 150 • FOV mapped onto 16 photoreceptors (subsampled from about 50 active pixels) whose activations are convolved with a Laplace filter.…”

“…Some research teams are working on even smaller dimensions [2,3,4], but their efforts are essentially concentrated on mechatronics issues. A major challenge for miniature flying robots is the ability to navigate autonomously in complex environments.…”

Model identification and attitude control scheme for a micromechanical flying insect

“…The controller was designed with standard discrete-time LQG software, and the diagonal entries in the weighting matrices are iteratively tuned to ensure a good transient response without saturating the control inputs. The final choice of the the weighting matrices Q and R for the regulator are Q = diag(10, 20, 20, 1, 1, 1) and R = diag (1,2,5). As in the case of pole placement, the above LQR optimal state feedback u = −Kx is not implementable without full state measurement.…”

“…Their unmatched maneuverability, low fabrication cost and small size make them very attractive for cost-critical missions in environments which are unpenetrable for larger size UAVs. This is the challenge that the Micromechanical Flying Insect project (MFI) being currently developed at UC Berkeley, has taken [2]. Figure 1 shows a mockup of the target robot fly.…”

Flexure Design Rules for Carbon Fiber Microrobotic Mechanisms

“…Researchers have also studied various kinds of flexures for obtaining rotational motion from the point of view of optimal force transmission [6]. In this paper, we present an application of some of these general principles to a novel fabrication technology which was developed at UC Berkeley during the Micromechanical Flying Insect (MFI) project [7]. This technique is ideally suited to fabricating mechanisms at the millimeter scale.…”