Insect-inspired thoracic mechanism with non-linear stiffness for flapping-wing micro air vehicles

Yao Wei Chin, Joel Tian Wei Goh, Gih Keong Lau

Research output: Contribution to journalConference articlepeer-review

2 Scopus citations

Abstract

This paper presents the design, analysis and characterization of a compliant mechanism that saves power for flapping-wing micro-air vehicles (FWMAV). The compliant mechanism is shaped after the insect's flight thorax, which has integrated elastic hinges for energy storage. It shows a nonlinearly increasing stiffness, which slows the wings down rapidly toward the end of a wing stroke and reverses the wings quickly, just like the elastic radial stop in Dipteran insects. When used to drive a 10-cm wing span FWMAV, it saves power up to 31% in comparison to a conventional rigid-body flapping mechanism, which have no elastic storage capability.

Original languageEnglish
Article number6907370
Pages (from-to)3544-3549
Number of pages6
JournalProceedings - IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation
DOIs
StatePublished - 22 Sep 2014
Event2014 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, ICRA 2014 - Hong Kong, China
Duration: 31 May 20147 Jun 2014

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