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...

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Main Authors: Chen, Yufeng, Arase, Cathleen, Ren, Zhijian, Chirarattananon, Pakpong
Other Authors: Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Research Laboratory of Electronics
Format: Article
Published: Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute 2022
Online Access:https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/144038
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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.
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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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