Flapping Nano Air Vehicles

Abstract

This document, from Team MicroPropulsion, is the Phase I final report for the DARPA Defense Science Office’s Nano Air Vehicle program, an 18-month project which took place between October 2006 and March 2008. The purpose of the program was to push forward the field of small hovering aircraft. “Small” in this context defines a vehicle which can fit into a cylinder 7.5 cm in diameter and up to 7.5 cm long. A previous DARPA program, a decade earlier, had opened the field of Micro Air Vehicles, which were allowed to have wingspans up to 15 cm. Although this Nano Air Vehicle program’s goal was to reduce the wingspan by a factor of two, the truly unique constraint in this program was the requirement to hover for one minute. That is, after flying one kilometer to a target, followed by one minute of slow-speed flight, the main challenge was to hover for 60 seconds - and then drop a 2 g payload within a half meter of the target, and return.