## 1 Introduction  
Recently, aerial manipulation platforms have been demonstrated to be a very efficient solution for applications, including contact inspection in industrial environments, cooperative free-flying for assembly and contact inspection in sites that are inaccessible by conventional means (e.g., European projects ARCAS FP7 [1] and the AEROARMS H2020 [2]). All of these achievements have been possible thanks to the additional manipulation capabilities added to standard UAVs providing them with the ability to interact with the environment. In the current GRIFFIN European project under funding scheme ERC Advanced Grant [3], we move a step forward in the development of aerial vehicles with manipulation capabilities, moving from multirotor platforms to bio-inspired aerial locomotion ones with flapping wings [4]. Thus, although electric-powered multirotor platforms have been demonstrated to be very efficient for manipulation, unfortunately they still suffer some technology deficiencies e.g., the well-known relatively short flight missions of about few minutes and other inherent limitations when interacting within the proximity of people like noise and hazard situations. Moreover, multirotor platforms have important limitations for application in potentially explosive environments such as oil and gas plants. A more energy efficient alternative to rotor propellers is the use of wings [5], as such, animal flapping flight has attracted an enormous interest in the last few years [6; 7]. The animal-like aerial locomotion exhibits two clear different modes: (1) powered while flapping and (2) unpowered while gliding or soaring. In unpowered modes, birds use the aerodynamic lift force of their wings in order to remain in the air and save energy, allowing them to travel long distances with a very small energy demand. In powered mode, birds use wings to generate lift and thrust forces while flapping, allowing them to accelerate or even decelerate to perch in difficult to reach places, offering them important advantages in terms of safety and accessibility. While airplanes require runways and most aerial robots need flat landing areas, arboreal birds consistently land on perches with a wide range of different geometries and surfaces, from electric lines to branches of trees. Perching helps small aerial robots to stay at rest, extending their autonomy by saving battery power. Recent advances in perching capabilities of aerial robots have improved their landing ability on engineered surfaces. In [8], a new framework is proposed to perform UAV perching and resting on a set of common structures and in [9], a new control technique for a perching maneuver of an aerial robot inspired by birds is proposed. Yet, few studies have focused on how they adapt to different surfaces once the feet had made contact with the surface, or how their toes and claws adapt to different places and even use them to balance while performing some tasks. Figure 1 shows the main phases of flapping wing aerial robots carrying out a mission. Our current GRIFFIN European project covers all these phases, for example, previous results have been recently published about the control of perching in [10] and the development of a bio-inspired claw for grasping and perching in [11]. The limited payload capacity of the flapping-wing platforms motivated the design of a small-scale compliant dual arm [12] whose weight is one order of magnitude lower compared to the arms typically integrated in multirotor platforms. Later, we introduced the concept of winged aerial manipulation robot [4] with the aim to reduce the total weight, using the robotic arms with a double functionality, for manipulating and as flapping wings. Each phase is being investigated separately due to the novelty of aerial robots with flapping wings. This work focuses on the development of a first prototype of a lightweight manipulator to be used as ornithopter limbs and explore its control possibilities (Phase (d) of Figure 1).