Mechanical design and fabrication of a kinetic sculpture with application to bioinspired drone design

TL;DR

This paper presents the mechanical design and fabrication of a bioinspired flapping wing robot, the Aerobat, mimicking bat wing articulation to achieve efficient flight through innovative use of mechanisms and 3D printing.

Contribution

It introduces a novel robotic wing design capturing key bat wing degrees-of-freedom using gears, linkages, and monolithic 3D-printed components.

Findings

The robot demonstrates wing expansion and retraction during flapping.

The design reduces negative lift, improving flight efficiency.

Mechanical analysis confirms the effectiveness of the articulated wing mechanism.

Abstract

Biologically-inspired robots are a very interesting and difficult branch of robotics dues to its very rich dynamical and morphological complexities. Among them, flying animals, such as bats, have been among the most difficult to take inspiration from as they exhibit complex wing articulation. We attempt to capture several of the key degrees-of-freedom that are present in the natural flapping gait of a bat. In this work, we present the mechanical design and analysis of our flapping wing robot, the Aerobat, where we capture the plunging and flexion-extension in the bat's flapping modes. This robot utilizes gears, cranks, and four-bar linkage mechanisms to actuate the arm-wing structure composed of rigid and flexible components monolithically fabricated using PolyJet 3D printing. The resulting robot exhibits wing expansion and retraction during the downstroke and upstroke respectively which minimizes the negative lift and results in a more efficient flapping gait.