Design of a flapping wing mechanism to coordinate both wing swing and wing pitch

Abstract

This paper presents a design procedure to achieve a flapping wing mechanism for a micro-air vehicle that coordinates both the wing swing and wing pitch with one actuator. The mechanism combines a planar four-bar linkage with a spatial four-bar linkage attached to the input and output links forming a six-bar linkage. The planar four-bar linkage was designed to control the wing swing trajectory profile and the spatial four-bar linkage was designed to coordinate the pitch of the wing to the swing movement. Tolerance zones were specified around the accuracy points, which were then sampled to generate a number of design candidates. The result was 29 designs that achieve the desired coordination of wing swing and pitch, and a prototype was constructed.