Model of wing drive kinematics. 2000 1.4X stainless steel thorax driven with PZT unimorph at low amplitude. Mar. 2000 1.4X stainless steel thorax with polyester wings and flexural joints. 5X polyester fanfold wing structure beating at 17 Hz in wind tunnel. Complete stroke shown starting at bottom of stroke, upper left.
Dark line is laser light sheet.
Stainless steel thorax structure with polyester wing. Ken Chiang has started design of a conventionally actuated mockup of an insect to explore wing stroke kinematics and control. The wings will be approximately 10 mm in size and driven by push rods using voice-coil actuators. We have some preliminary flow images with low wing velocity. Flow Image Wing drive system with 2 DOF per wing.