Design, Characterization, and Liftoff of an Insect-Scale Soft Robotic Dragonfly Powered by Dielectric Elastomer Actuators
Dragonflies are agile and efficient flyers that use two pairs of wings for demonstrating exquisite aerial maneuvers. Compared to two-winged insects such as bees or flies, dragonflies leverage forewing and hindwing interactions for achieving higher efficiency and net lift. Here we develop the first a...
| Main Authors: | , , , |
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| Format: | Article |
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Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute
2022
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| Online Access: | https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/144038 |
| _version_ | 1826195964133638144 |
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| author | Chen, Yufeng Arase, Cathleen Ren, Zhijian Chirarattananon, Pakpong |
| author2 | Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Research Laboratory of Electronics |
| author_facet | Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Research Laboratory of Electronics Chen, Yufeng Arase, Cathleen Ren, Zhijian Chirarattananon, Pakpong |
| author_sort | Chen, Yufeng |
| collection | MIT |
| description | Dragonflies are agile and efficient flyers that use two pairs of wings for demonstrating exquisite aerial maneuvers. Compared to two-winged insects such as bees or flies, dragonflies leverage forewing and hindwing interactions for achieving higher efficiency and net lift. Here we develop the first at-scale dragonfly-like robot and investigate the influence of flapping-wing kinematics on net lift force production. Our 317 mg robot is driven by two independent dielectric elastomer actuators that flap four wings at 350 Hz. We extract the robot flapping-wing kinematics using a high-speed camera, and further measure the robot lift forces at different operating frequencies, voltage amplitudes, and phases between the forewings and hindwings. Our robot achieves a maximum lift-to-weight ratio of 1.49, and its net lift force increases by 19% when the forewings and hindwings flap in-phase compared to out-of-phase flapping. These at-scale experiments demonstrate that forewing–hindwing interaction can significantly influence lift force production and aerodynamic efficiency of flapping-wing robots with passive wing pitch designs. Our results could further enable future experiments to achieve feedback-controlled flights. |
| first_indexed | 2024-09-23T10:18:38Z |
| format | Article |
| id | mit-1721.1/144038 |
| institution | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| last_indexed | 2024-09-23T10:18:38Z |
| publishDate | 2022 |
| publisher | Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute |
| record_format | dspace |
| spelling | mit-1721.1/1440382023-02-08T19:12:17Z Design, Characterization, and Liftoff of an Insect-Scale Soft Robotic Dragonfly Powered by Dielectric Elastomer Actuators Chen, Yufeng Arase, Cathleen Ren, Zhijian Chirarattananon, Pakpong Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Research Laboratory of Electronics Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Dragonflies are agile and efficient flyers that use two pairs of wings for demonstrating exquisite aerial maneuvers. Compared to two-winged insects such as bees or flies, dragonflies leverage forewing and hindwing interactions for achieving higher efficiency and net lift. Here we develop the first at-scale dragonfly-like robot and investigate the influence of flapping-wing kinematics on net lift force production. Our 317 mg robot is driven by two independent dielectric elastomer actuators that flap four wings at 350 Hz. We extract the robot flapping-wing kinematics using a high-speed camera, and further measure the robot lift forces at different operating frequencies, voltage amplitudes, and phases between the forewings and hindwings. Our robot achieves a maximum lift-to-weight ratio of 1.49, and its net lift force increases by 19% when the forewings and hindwings flap in-phase compared to out-of-phase flapping. These at-scale experiments demonstrate that forewing–hindwing interaction can significantly influence lift force production and aerodynamic efficiency of flapping-wing robots with passive wing pitch designs. Our results could further enable future experiments to achieve feedback-controlled flights. 2022-07-25T18:47:59Z 2022-07-25T18:47:59Z 2022-07-18 2022-07-25T16:32:31Z Article http://purl.org/eprint/type/JournalArticle https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/144038 Micromachines 13 (7): 1136 (2022) PUBLISHER_CC http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/mi13071136 Creative Commons Attribution https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ application/pdf Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute |
| spellingShingle | Chen, Yufeng Arase, Cathleen Ren, Zhijian Chirarattananon, Pakpong Design, Characterization, and Liftoff of an Insect-Scale Soft Robotic Dragonfly Powered by Dielectric Elastomer Actuators |
| title | Design, Characterization, and Liftoff of an Insect-Scale Soft Robotic Dragonfly Powered by Dielectric Elastomer Actuators |
| title_full | Design, Characterization, and Liftoff of an Insect-Scale Soft Robotic Dragonfly Powered by Dielectric Elastomer Actuators |
| title_fullStr | Design, Characterization, and Liftoff of an Insect-Scale Soft Robotic Dragonfly Powered by Dielectric Elastomer Actuators |
| title_full_unstemmed | Design, Characterization, and Liftoff of an Insect-Scale Soft Robotic Dragonfly Powered by Dielectric Elastomer Actuators |
| title_short | Design, Characterization, and Liftoff of an Insect-Scale Soft Robotic Dragonfly Powered by Dielectric Elastomer Actuators |
| title_sort | design characterization and liftoff of an insect scale soft robotic dragonfly powered by dielectric elastomer actuators |
| url | https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/144038 |
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