Development of a 3.2g untethered flapping-wing platform for flight energetics and control experiments

This paper presents a biologically inspired, 3.2g untethered vehicle capable of both active (flapping) and passive (gliding) flight. We discuss the overall vehicle design, as well as its validation with thrust data from benchtop testing, simulation, and flight test results. The vehicle has one pair of flapping wings for thrust generation, making it a good analogue for insects of the same scale. Flight energetics and control can be thoroughly explored through the array of simulation and testing that have been implemented. Integrated electronics provide wireless communication, sensing, and basic open-loop flight control, making flight test iteration fast and providing additional dynamics data. All of the testing setups and the physical vehicle working together have created a robust development environment for future iterations on the vehicle. The successful flight of the vehicle, including the data collection from onboard sensors and an external motion capture arena, show that this platform is ideal to study flight energetics and control schemes at an insect scale.