Biomimetic Drones Inspired by Dragonflies Will Require a Systems Based Approach and Insights from Biology

Chahl, Javaan; Chitsaz, Nasim; McIvor, Blake; Ogunwa, Titilayo; Kok, Jia-Ming; McIntyre, Timothy J.; Abdullah, Ermira Junita

doi:10.3390/drones5020024

Cited by 12 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 101 publications

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“…Researchers have focused on the superior flight performance of dragonflies, and numerous studies have been conducted on the aerodynamic design and control of dragonflyinspired micro air vehicles [16,53].…”

Section: Damage Mitigationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Review of Biomimetic Approaches for Drones

Tanaka

Asignacion

Nakata

et al. 2022

Drones

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The utilization of small unmanned aerial vehicles (SUAVs), commonly known as drones, has increased drastically in various industries in the past decade. Commercial drones face challenges in terms of safety, durability, flight performance, and environmental effects such as the risk of collision and damage. Biomimetics, which is inspired by the sophisticated flying mechanisms in aerial animals, characterized by robustness and intelligence in aerodynamic performance, flight stability, and low environmental impact, may provide feasible solutions and innovativeness to drone design. In this paper, we review the recent advances in biomimetic approaches for drone development. The studies were extracted from several databases and we categorized the challenges by their purposes—namely, flight stability, flight efficiency, collision avoidance, damage mitigation, and grasping during flight. Furthermore, for each category, we summarized the achievements of current biomimetic systems and then identified their limitations. We also discuss future tasks on the research and development associated with biomimetic drones in terms of innovative design, flight control technologies, and biodiversity conservation. This paper can be used to explore new possibilities for developing biomimetic drones in industry and as a reference for necessary policy making.

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Section: Damage Mitigationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Review of Biomimetic Approaches for Drones

Tanaka

Asignacion

Nakata

et al. 2022

Drones

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“…In recent years, there has been an increased interest in the development of insectinspired micro-aerial vehicles (MAVs), but biological research into insect flight has a long history. The development of bioinspired systems requires the understanding of the physics of biological systems and behaviors, not just copying the external shape [9].…”

Section: Moving Masses In Insect Flightmentioning

confidence: 99%

Modeling and Control of an Articulated Multibody Aircraft

2022

Self Cite

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Insects use dynamic articulation and actuation of their abdomen and other appendages to augment aerodynamic flight control. These dynamic phenomena in flight serve many purposes, including maintaining balance, enhancing stability, and extending maneuverability. The behaviors have been observed and measured by biologists but have not been well modeled in a flight dynamics framework. Biological appendages are generally comparatively large, actuated in rotation, and serve multiple biological functions. Technological moving masses for flight control have tended to be compact, translational, internally mounted and dedicated to the task. Many flight characteristics of biological flyers far exceed any technological flyers on the same scale. Mathematical tools that support modern control techniques to explore and manage these actuator functions may unlock new opportunities to achieve agility. The compact tensor model of multibody aircraft flight dynamics developed here allows unified dynamic and aerodynamic simulation and control of bioinspired aircraft with wings and any number of idealized appendage masses. The demonstrated aircraft model was a dragonfly-like fixed-wing aircraft. The control effect of the moving abdomen was comparable to the control surfaces, with lateral abdominal motion substituting for an aerodynamic rudder to achieve coordinated turns. Vertical fuselage motion achieved the same effect as an elevator, and included potentially useful transient torque reactions both up and down. The best performance was achieved when both moving masses and control surfaces were employed in the control solution. An aircraft with fuselage actuation combined with conventional control surfaces could be managed with a modern optimal controller designed using the multibody flight dynamics model presented here.

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“…Dragonflies have been recognized as the apex predators of the insect world [9], which have millions of years of adaptation [10], and almost 6000 species with wingspans ranging from 18 mm to 190 mm [11]. By virtue of the tandem wing configuration, they perform superior flight as they can hover in the air, glide with minimal energy consumption, and even maneuver in all directions [12][13][14][15], which makes them master all the flight conditions of helicopters, fixed-wing aircraft, and gliders, which aroused intense interest to study the aerodynamics of dragonflies in different flight modes [16] and develop dragonflyinspired Micro Air Vehicles (MAVs) [17][18][19]. All four wings of a dragonfly are powered directly by the flight muscles attached to the wing bases; thus, they can independently adjust the flapping amplitude, the stroking phase, and the flapping amplitude offset of each wing to generate aerodynamic forces and torques [20][21][22].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

HiFly-Dragon: A Dragonfly Inspired Flapping Flying Robot with Modified, Resonant, Direct-Driven Flapping Mechanisms

Ma,

Gong,

Tian

et al. 2024

Drones

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This paper describes a dragonfly-inspired Flapping Wing Micro Air Vehicle (FW-MAV), named HiFly-Dragon. Dragonflies exhibit exceptional flight performance in nature, surpassing most of the other insects, and benefit from their abilities to independently move each of their four wings, including adjusting the flapping amplitude and the flapping amplitude offset. However, designing and fabricating a flapping robot with multi-degree-of-freedom (multi-DOF) flapping driving mechanisms under stringent size, weight, and power (SWaP) constraints poses a significant challenge. In this work, we propose a compact microrobot dragonfly with four tandem independently controllable wings, which is directly driven by four modified resonant flapping mechanisms integrated on the Printed Circuit Boards (PCBs) of the avionics. The proposed resonant flapping mechanism was tested to be able to enduringly generate 10 gf lift at a frequency of 28 Hz and an amplitude of 180° for a single wing with an external DC power supply, demonstrating the effectiveness of the resonance and durability improvement. All of the mechanical parts were integrated on two PCBs, and the robot demonstrates a substantial weight reduction. The latest prototype has a wingspan of 180 mm, a total mass of 32.97 g, and a total lift of 34 gf. The prototype achieved lifting off on a balance beam, demonstrating that the directly driven robot dragonfly is capable of overcoming self-gravity with onboard batteries.

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Biomimetic Drones Inspired by Dragonflies Will Require a Systems Based Approach and Insights from Biology

Cited by 12 publications

References 101 publications

Review of Biomimetic Approaches for Drones

Review of Biomimetic Approaches for Drones

Modeling and Control of an Articulated Multibody Aircraft

HiFly-Dragon: A Dragonfly Inspired Flapping Flying Robot with Modified, Resonant, Direct-Driven Flapping Mechanisms

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