High Performance Piezoelectric Actuators and Wings for Nano Air Vehicles

Abstract

Abstract : Swarms of flying robotic insects could revolutionize hazardous environment exploration, search and rescue missions, and military applications. Reducing size to insect scale enables entrance into extremely narrow spaces with inherent stealth advantages. For mass production, these vehicles must have reliable and repeatable fabrication processes that define flapping wing mechanisms with microscale features and produce large flapping amplitudes at frequencies in the range of many insects. This report focuses on the design and fabrication processes of flapping wing mechanisms for these types of robots.