Design and development of an insectinspired micro air vehicle
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Date
2019-06
Authors
Cheaw Boon Hong
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Abstract
Micro Air Vehicles (MAVs) are now an active research focus that has caught attention
from global talents. With its’ small size, MAVs have considerable potential to be capable
of performing missions such as environmental monitoring, surveillance and assessment
in hostile situation. Through the process of mimicking insect flight, however, researchers
from both in educational institution and industry are facing a lot of challenges such as
instability of the air vehicle during the hovering, the maneuverability, the propulsive
efficiency due to miniaturization. The objective is to innovate an efficient four-winged
FW-MAV platform with better payload carrying capability, where human can allocate
important payloads on the FW-MAV during environmental monitoring and indoor
surveillance missions. Using Computer Aided Design (CAD) software SolidWorks, the
FW-MAVs’ wing and tail are designed. With the allocated time and financial support,
two wings are developed using traditional cut and glue method and advanced vacuum
mold method. Avionics connection is tested before assembling with the wing and tail.
Flight test and vertical thrust measurement are conducted on FW-MAV to compare the
performance of different wings and different model at full throttle maximum speed. In
general, the FW-MAV produces maximum vertical thrust at 10° angle of attack. Wing
which has the stiffeners and manufactured using vacuum mold produces the highest
thrust compare with other wings. Possible future work is to optimize the tail design and
control algorithm in order to achieve hovering flight.