2P2-C05 Fundamental Study on Hovering by Wing Beats for Flying Robot
Koji SHIBUYA · The Proceedings of JSME annual Conference on Robotics and Mechatronics (Robomec) · 2006
This paper describes a concept and fundamental experiments on hovering of a robot by wing beats. In making a robot, I focused on concepts of "cheap design," "morphological computation," and "taking advantage of material property," which are proposed in the field of artificial intelligence recently. I designed a robot that has one D.C. motor and a crank mechanism for wing beats based on the concepts. The robot's wings beat in the horizontal plane, and were made by soft materials, such as polyurethane, cardboard, and plastic to increase air flow to downward. I observed videos of flapping wings and measured lifts in every materials and sizes of wings. From the results, I concluded that materials and sizes of wings should be chosen carefully according to flapping frequencies, weight of a robot, and so on.