A wireless radiofrequency-powered insect-scale flapping-wing aerial vehicle

Abstract

Insect-scale aerial vehicles are useful tools for communication, environmental sensing and surveying confined spaces. However, the lack of lightweight high-power-density batteries has limited the untethered flight durations of these micro aerial vehicles. Wireless power transmission using radiofrequency electromagnetic waves could potentially offer transmissivity through obstacles, wave-targeting/focusing capabilities and non-mechanical steering of the vehicles via phased-array antennas. But the use of radiofrequency power transmission has so far been limited to larger vehicles. Here we show that a wireless radiofrequency power supply can be used to drive an insect-scale flapping-wing aerial vehicle. We use a sub-gram radiofrequency power receiver with a power-to-weight density of 4,900 W kg–1, which is five times higher than that of off-the-shelf lithium polymer batteries of similar mass. With this system, we demonstrate the untethered take off of the flapping-wing micro aerial vehicle. Our RF-powered aircraft has a mass of 1.8 g and is more than 25 times lighter than previous radiofrequency-powered micro aerial vehicles.