Author(s)

S.C. Burgess, K. Alemzadeh & L. Zhang

Abstract

Insects are capable of very agile flight on a small scale. If a man-made machine can be built that can fly like an insect, it would have important industrial, civil and military applications. Insects have complex wing motions including nonplanar wing strokes and stroke reversal. This paper presents the design of a novel mechanism which can produce insect type wing motion. The mechanism is very light and compact and has potential for use in micro air vehicles. A prototype has been built and some preliminary tests have been carried out to characterize the mechanism performance. Keywords: insect flight, wing motion, novel mechanisms, wing reversal, lift. 1 Introduction The ability for controlled flight has existed in at least four classes of creature: (1) birds; (2) mammals (bats); (3) reptiles (pterosaurs);

Keywords