Improved Aerodynamic Performance of Ornithopter Aerial Robot Using Spatial Mechanism Compared to Planar Design

Ornithopter’s research can be categorized into two parts. First, aerodynamics analysis of the flying robot including designing the body and choosing the robot’s material based on the analysis. Second, design and analysis of the mechanism which makes the wings move. So far, most of the researches has been focused on the first subject, i. e., aerodynamics analysis; even some books were published on this topic. However, there is little research about the mechanisms while most of the previous works are based on the patterns verified before. This paper will propose the design of a new spatial mechanism. Besides, three common planar mechanisms will be modeled and simulated to analyze and compare to the proposed mechanism in terms of aerodynamics forces for one wing beat cycle. These results reveal that the proposed 3D mechanism works more promising than others.