FWMAV stands for Flapping Wing Micro-Air Vehicle. It is a research that focuses on bringing the flight dynamic in birds and insects into the air vehicles. The maximum dimension for this micro air vehicles is 15 cm according to D.A.R.P.A (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency). These miniature vehicles are used for indoor reconnaissance, surveillance, military purposes, and other applications. The flapping insects or birds perform unconventional aerodynamic mechanism to generate high lift at low Reynolds number and also unconventional stabilization mechanism where they have to stabilize their bodies while flying to overcome disturbances.

Besides the general goal that is to design, build, and fly the flapping-type micro air vehicle that resembles the large insects, for this quarter, our specific goal is to experimentally verify and quantify the natural stability/vibrational stability of the flapping-type micro air vehicle while hovering (similar to large insects).

For the past weeks, we have been working on locating the center of gravity for the bird to stabilize while flapping, the wings mechanism that could create the pitch angle while flying, and how to reduce the thrust force on the prototype. Our group is using the DIY Electric Dove Super Capacitor Wing Flapping Bird Toy for the experiment. As of week 6, one of the interesting concept we came up with was to put two bird mechanisms against each other to see whether the thrust forces got cancelled out and thus the only forces acting on the bird are lift force and gravity as we expected.

The Bigger Picture for this project is mainly to increase the passion and scientific curiosity in bringing the beauty and application of the nature rules into the engineering world. The future of aviation can be unfolded by exploited the unconventional stabilization mechanisms as seen in birds/insects into airplanes, aircraft, MAV, etc.