PECASE: Soaring Mechanisms for Flapping-Wing Micro Air Vehicles.

摘要

In the PECASE program, we address another challenge of small-scale flight: energetics. Gliding forward flight potentially alleviates both of these challenges since gliding requires minimal power and forward flight can achieve passive stability (e.g. using a positive wing dihedral). Many insects effectively use gliding modes to extend flight duration - for example. Monarch butterflies travel greater than 50 miles per day during migration and thousands of miles in aggregate. The PECASE program elucidated generate energy-optimal strategies for flapping/gliding intermittent flight through the development of a robotic insect capable of bio-inspired flapping/gliding flight and a thorough characterization of the energetics of this flight mode. The overall objective is to elucidate the role of intermittent flight in biology and apply this to increase the performance of insect-scale MAVs.