Improvement of a Palm-Size Flapping Wing System

Flight principles of small birds and insects have been a great interest of many researchers, leading to much progress in a research area of Flapping Wing MAV (FW-MAV). With lots of efforts to mimic flapping motion of small bird and/or insect flight, there have been successful flights of motor-driven FW-MAVs with reasonable flight time endurance. In this work, two prototypes of FW-MAVs with 2.4 GHz System-on Chip (SoC) have been designed with no tail configuration, e.g. prototype 1 with only one DC motor and prototype 2 with two DC motor. Utilization of DC motor powered by Lithium Polymer (LiPo) battery was used to actuate the mechanical system of the FW-MAV and to generate flapping wing motion. Then, performances of electrical devices as well as linkage system were tested for motor control and wireless communication. Flapping motion of the FW-MAV was also evaluated based on kinematics simulation and flapping frequency test measurement. Finally, thrusts of both FW-MAVs were observed and compared to evaluate their flight performance. Based on the evaluation, even though prototype 2 was about 4% heavier than prototype 1, it can generate about 10% larger flapping angle and about 3 times of thrust.