Dove: A biomimetic flapping-wing micro air vehicle

TLDR

Flapping‑wing micro air vehicles have attracted international attention for two decades, with early successes demonstrating flight capability. The study aims to design a flapping‑wing micro air vehicle capable of performing tasks autonomously. The authors developed the Dove by integrating a flexible wing, a novel flapping mechanism, and on‑board avionics. The resulting Dove weighs 220 g, has a 50 cm wingspan, can fly autonomously for 30 minutes, and streams live stabilized color video to a ground station up to 4 km away.

Abstract

This paper describes the design and development of the Dove, a flapping-wing micro air vehicle (FWMAV), which was developed in Northwestern Polytechnical University. FWMAVs have attracted international attentions since the past two decades. Since some achievements have been obtained, such as the capability of supporting an air vehicle to fly, our research goal was to design an FWMAV that has the ability to accomplish a task. Main investigations were presented in this paper, including the flexible wing design, the flapping mechanism design, and the on-board avionics development. The current Dove has a mass of 220 g, a wingspan of 50 cm, and the ability of operating fully autonomously, flying lasts half an hour, and transmitting live stabilized color video to a ground station over 4 km away.