3rd US-European Competition and Workshop on Micro Air Vehicle Systems (MAV07) European Mi.pdfVIP

3rd US-European Competition and Workshop on Micro Air Vehicle Systems (MAV07) European Micro Air Vehicle Conference and Flight Competition (EMAV2007), 17-21 September 2007, Toulouse, France Flapping-wing flight in bird-sized UAVs for the ROBUR project: from an evolutionary optimization to a real flapping-wing mechanism Emmanuel de Margerie?, Jean-Baptiste Mouret? Ste?phane Doncieux?, Jean-Arcady Meyer§, ISIR, Institut des Syste?mes Intelligents et Robotique LIP6, 104, avenue du Pre?sident Kennedy 75016 Paris, FRANCE Thomas Ravasi?, Pascal Martinelli‖, Christophe Grand?? Institut Universitaire de Technologie de Cachan 9 avenue de la division Leclerc 94230 Cachan, FRANCE Birds daily execute complex maneuvers out of reach for current UAVs of comparable size, and these capacities are a least partly linked to efficient flapping kinematics. This article describes research efforts contributing to the ROBUR project that aims at producing a bird-sized UAV relying on such advanced kinematics. First, a multi-objective evolutionary algorithm was used to provide insights about the range of key mechanical parameters required for a 0.5 kg UAV flying horizontally at differ- ent speeds. Optimization lead to a minimum energy consumption of 20-50 W/kg for a 10-12 m/s speed, with wing-beat frequencies between 3 to 5 Hz. The corresponding simulations indicate that wing folding would substantially decrease the power consumption (25-44%) at medium to high speeds. Then, these results guided the design of a parallel flapping-wing mechanism based on two connected rod-crank devices. Wing motion is produced by four position-controlled brushless motors and the corresponding kinematic model is described in this article. Wing folding mechanism design will be the subject of future work. I. Introduction The capabilities of mini-UAVs have drastically increased thanks to recent advances in terms of energystorage, effector power and electronic miniaturization, but they still remain far below the mane