Design and Control of a Flapping Wing System Test Bench

Abstract

The design of an adaptable system to analyze the properties of flight dynamics in flapping wings systems helps to identify their characteristics and allow the use of different control techniques to improve their performance. These devices present difficulties in modeling; therefore, the software to identify the system parameters divided into several stages gives the feasibility to manage these complexities. This work presents the design of a prototype test bench based on mathematical modeling of a balancing beam with a flapping mechanism with wings. This system consists of a bar that has a rotational degree of freedom contained in the vertical and horizontal plane each, in which one of the ends of the flapping mechanism is located. This movement is produced by the thrust force due to wings flapping coupled to a gear set and two motors for each wing. The tunable speed of rotation in the direct current motor allows controlling the force of thrust, managing the bar movement towards a determined angular position measured by an Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) and two encoders in both axes. The model was obtained experimentally.