Thrust Control of Biomimetic Micro Air Vehicle with Flapping Wings Directly Driven by Motors in Resonant Frequency

In this paper, a flapping wing system utilizing extension spring and resonant frequency is proposed. It uses extension spring instead of torsional spring, that makes the system simple and easy to design. The proposed flapping wing system is constructed using a DC motor, an extension spring, a pinion gear, a spur gear, and a flapping wing. It is found that the proposed flapping wing system works well without fatigue failure or mechanical deformation of the spring. We fabricated a flying robot using a pair of flapping systems. For thrust control of the flying robot, 4-layered printed circuit board which consists of microcontroller and inertial measurement unit is designed and attached on flying robot. Clap and fling effect is occurred at 6V, 24Hz which is natural frequency. When it is mounted on a frame capable of moving only in the vertical direction, flying robot was possible to rise, hover and fall by adjusting input sine wave signal.