Abstract:
The growing interest in unmanned aircraft, especially for surveillance in constrained areas,
has triggered much research in the area of micro air vehicles (MAVs). Sensors and
actuators are becoming smaller and smarter, enabling new aircraft designs. MAVs offer the
potential to fly reconnaissance missions in constrained areas, which are difficult for larger
aircraft to accomplish. Their small size allows them to navigate in tight corners at low
speeds and blend in with their surroundings. The opportunity exists to build low cost
systems that can hover or take off in short distances, generate less noise, and be quickly
deployed in the field.
Flapping Wing Micro Air Vehicle (FMAV) based on avian flight is called
‘Ornithopter’ and that based on insect flight is known as ‘Entomopter’. This research is
restricted to Ornithopters only. The kinematics of real birds are difficult to be mimicked
because of extreme complexities involved and weight limitation of an ornithopter. Simple
flapping of wings with suitably chosen parameters, and overall light weight, can produce
required lift and thrust. Thus most of the successful ornithopters are designed only with
flapping mechanism having flexible membrane wings. The flexibility of the wings causes
passive pitching movement during flapping which improves the performance. Flapping
frequency, flapping amplitude, incidence angle, flexibility of wings and their geometry are
the important design parameters for an ornithopter.
