Development Scenario of Micro Ornithopters

摘要

Regarding the 15 gram-weight flapping micro-air-vehicles (FMAVs) orrnmicro ornithopters, how to prolong the operation time and improve thernflight control is very critical to their scenario of development. Using thernavailable transducer devices, this work presents four new features forrnornithopters and the corresponding feasibility discussion respectively. Thern1st feature is repeatable short take-off and landing (re-STOL) so that thernornithopter can automatically land on the ground at times of wind gustsrnbeyond operational bracket, while resetting to an orientation suited forrnre-take-off. The 2nd feature is to recharge the onboard lithium battery byrnflexible thin film photo-voltaic (PV) on the tail. The 3rd feature is towardrnthe autonomous flight control of ornithopters. It is realized by integratingrngram-weighted micro-controller integrated with MEMS inertialrnmeasurement units (IMUs). Orientation control and light-triggered take-offrnare proposed herein firstly. The 4th feature is to develop new flappingrnmechanisms with large flap angle with no phase lag between two flappingrnwings. The above four newly developed features of ornithopters canrnpreliminarily solve their current four shortcomings, i.e., vulnerability to gustrnwind, short flight endurance, difficulty in autonomous control and smallrnpayload.