Design of the first sub-milligram flapping wing aerial vehicle

08/09/2019

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by   Palak Bhushan, et al.

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Here we report the first sub-milligram flapping wing vehicle which is able to mimic insect wing kinematics. Wing stroke amplitude of 90^∘ and wing pitch amplitude of 80^∘ is demonstrated. This is also the smallest wing-span (single wing length of 3.5mm) device reported yet and is at the same mass-scale as a fruit fly. Assembly has been made simple and requires gluing together 5 components in contrast to higher part count and intensive assembly of other milligram-scale microrobots. This increases the fabrication speed and success-rate of the fully fabricated device. Low operational voltages (70mV) makes testing further easy and will enable eventual deployment of autonomous sub-milligram aerial vehicles.