A novel mechanism for emulating insect wing kinematics.
A novel dual-differential four-bar flapping mechanism that can accurately emulate insect wing kinematics in all three degrees of freedom (translation, rotation and stroke plane deviation) is developed. The mechanism is specifically designed to be simple and scalable such that it can be utilized on an insect-based flapping wing micro air vehicle. Kinematic formulations for the wing stroke position, pitch angle and coning angle for this model are derived from first principles and compared with a 3D simulation. A benchtop flapping mechanism based on this model was designed and built, which was also equipped with a balance for force measurements. 3D motion capture tests were conducted on this setup to demonstrate the capability of generating complex figure-of-eight flapping motions along with dynamic pitching. The dual-differential four-bar mechanism was implemented on a light-weight vehicle that demonstrated tethered hover.
Alfred Gessow Rotorcraft Center, Department of Aerospace Engineering, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20740, USA. pseshadr@umd.edu
Pranay
P
Seshadri
Moble
M
Benedict
Inderjit
I
Chopra
D000818:Animals; D040761:Biomimetic Materials; D032701:Biomimetics / Q000295:instrumentation*; D003198:Computer Simulation; D017076:Computer-Aided Design; D004867:Equipment Design; D019544:Equipment Failure Analysis; D005426:Flight, Animal / Q000502:physiology*; D007313:Insecta / Q000502:physiology*; D008954:Models, Biological; D014921:Wings, Animal / Q000502:physiology*