Fast ground-to-air transition with avian-inspired multifunctional legs.

Most birds can navigate seamlessly between aerial and terrestrial environments. Whereas the forelimbs evolved into wings primarily for flight, the hindlimbs serve diverse functions such as walking, hopping and leaping, and jumping take-off for transitions into flight. These capabilities have inspired engineers to aim for similar multimodality in aerial robots, expanding their range of applications across diverse environments.

Passive wing deployment and retraction in beetles and flapping microrobots.

Birds, bats and many insects can tuck their wings against their bodies when at rest and deploy them to power flight. Whereas birds and bats use well-developed pectoral and wing muscles, how insects control their wing deployment and retraction remains unclear because this varies among insect species. Beetles (Coleoptera) display one of the most complex mechanisms.

Mechanisms of collision recovery in flying beetles and flapping-wing robots.

At rest, beetles fold and tuck their hindwings under the elytra. For flight, the hindwings are deployed through a series of unfolding configurations that are passively driven by flapping forces. The folds lock into place as the wing fully unfolds and thereafter operates as a flat membrane to generate the aerodynamic forces.

Mimicking nature's flyers: a review of insect-inspired flying robots.

Insects have attracted much interest from scientists and engineers as they offer an endless source of inspiration for creating innovative engineering designs. By mimicking flying insects, it may be possible to create highly efficient biomimetic drones. In this paper, we provide an overview on how the principles of insect flight, including large stroke amplitudes and wing rotations, the clap-and-fling effect and flight control have been implemented to successfully demonstrate untethered, controlled free-flight in the insect-inspired flying robots.

Longitudinal mode model-based controller design for tailless flapping wing robot with loop shaping compensator.

In this study, the stable proportional-derivative (PD) controller gains for pitch control (longitudinal control) are obtained using the linearized and non-coupled longitudinal-mode flight dynamics model of the tailless, hover-capable, flapping wing robot named KUBeetle. To acquire a more realistic longitudinal model of KUBeetle, we incorporated the dynamics of the sensors, filters, and servo. Then, the range of PD controller gains that yield stable and sufficient stability robustness are determined using the Routh-Hurwitz, root locus, and H norm stability analyses.

Extremely large sweep amplitude enables high wing loading in giant hovering insects.

Beetle Allomyrina dichotoma is one of the largest insects that performs many remarkable modes of locomotion, particularly hovering flight capability. In order to stay airborne, its flexible hindwings are flapped so as to work as a thrust generator. However, the wing loading of the beetle is relatively large (38.

Design and demonstration of a bio-inspired flapping-wing-assisted jumping robot.

Jumping insects such as fleas, froghoppers, grasshoppers, and locusts take off from the ground using a catapult mechanism to push their legs against the surface of the ground while using their pairs of flapping wings to propel them into the air. Such combination of jumping and flapping is expected as an efficient way to overcome unspecified terrain or avoid large obstacles. In this work, we present the conceptual design and verification of a bio-inspired flapping-wing-assisted jumping robot, named Jump-flapper, which mimics jumping insects' locomotion strategy.

Wing inertia as a cause of aerodynamically uneconomical flight with high angles of attack in hovering insects.

Flying insects can maintain maneuverability in the air by flapping their wings, and, to save energy, the wings should operate following optimal kinematics. However, unlike conventional rotary wings, insects operate their wings at aerodynamically uneconomical and high angles of attack (AoA). Although insects have continuously received attention from biologists and aerodynamicists, the high AoA operation in insect flight has not been clearly explained.

Design and evaluation of a deformable wing configuration for economical hovering flight of an insect-like tailless flying robot.

Studies on wing kinematics indicate that flapping insect wings operate at higher angles of attack (AoAs) than conventional rotary wings. Thus, effectively flying an insect-like flapping-wing micro air vehicle (FW-MAV) requires appropriate wing design for achieving low power consumption and high force generation. Even though theoretical studies can be performed to identify appropriate geometric AoAs for a wing for achieving efficient hovering flight, designing an actual wing by implementing these angles into a real flying robot is challenging.

Design and stable flight of a 21 g insect-like tailless flapping wing micro air vehicle with angular rates feedback control.

An insect-like tailless flapping wing micro air vehicle (FW-MAV) without feedback control eventually becomes unstable after takeoff. Flying an insect-like tailless FW-MAV is more challenging than flying a bird-like tailed FW-MAV, due to the difference in control principles. This work introduces the design and controlled flight of an insect-like tailless FW-MAV, named KUBeetle.

An experimental comparative study of the efficiency of twisted and flat flapping wings during hovering flight.

This work presents a parametric study to find a proper wing configuration for achieving economical flight using unsteady blade element theory, which is based on the 3D kinematics of a flapping wing. Power loading was first considered as a performance parameter for the study. The power loadings at each wing section along the wingspan were obtained for various geometric angles of attack (AoAs) by calculating the ratios of the vertical forces generated and the power consumed by that particular wing section.

Clap-and-fling mechanism in a hovering insect-like two-winged flapping-wing micro air vehicle.

This study used numerical and experimental approaches to investigate the role played by the clap-and-fling mechanism in enhancing force generation in hovering insect-like two-winged flapping-wing micro air vehicle (FW-MAV). The flapping mechanism was designed to symmetrically flap wings at a high flapping amplitude of approximately 192°. The clap-and-fling mechanisms were thereby implemented at both dorsal and ventral stroke reversals.

Optimal flapping wing for maximum vertical aerodynamic force in hover: twisted or flat?

This work presents a parametric study, using the unsteady blade element theory, to investigate the role of twist in a hovering flapping wing. For the investigation, a flapping-wing system was developed to create a wing motion of large flapping amplitude. Three-dimensional kinematics of a passively twisted wing, which is capable of creating a linearly variable geometric angle of attack (AoA) along the wingspan, was measured during the flapping motion and used for the analysis.

Experimental study on thrust and power of flapping-wing system based on rack-pinion mechanism.

This experimental study investigates the effect of three parameters: wing aspect ratio (AR), wing offset, and flapping frequency, on thrust generation and power consumption of a flapping-wing system based on a rack-pinion mechanism. The new flapping-wing system is simple but robust, and is able to create a large flapping amplitude. The thrust measured by a load cell reveals that for a given power, the flapping-wing system using a higher wing AR produces larger thrust and higher flapping frequency at the wing offset of 0.