The development of a miniature mechanism for producing insect wing motion

摘要

Insects are capable of very agile flight on a small scale. If a man-made machine can be built that can fly like an insect, it would have important industrial, civil and military applications. Insects have complex wing motions including non-planar wing strokes and stroke reversal. This paper presents the design of a novel mechanism which can produce insect type wing motion. The mechanism is very light and compact and has potential for use in micro air vehicles. A prototype has been built and some preliminary tests have been carried out to characterize the mechanism performance.