Study of design parameters of flapping-wings

As one of the most important components of a flapping-wing micro air vehicle (FWMAV), the design of an energy-efficient flapping-wing has been a research interest recently. Research on insect flight from different perspectives has been carried out, mainly with regard to wing morphology, flapping kinematics, and unsteady aerodynamics. However,...

A Computational Study on the Aerodynamics of a 90 mm Ducted Contra-Rotating Lift Fan

In this paper, a steady 3D numerical study has been conducted on a 90 mm counter rotating lift fan to investigate its aerodynamic performance. The effect of axial distance between the fans and rotor speed are studied. A low thrust generation has been revealed from the simulation results due to the unfavourable working condition for the upstream...

Off-board Visual Odometry and Control of an Ultralight Quadrotor MAV

In this paper, we propose an approach to autonomously control a quadrotor micro aerial vehicle (MAV). With take-off weight of 50 g and 8-min flight endurance, the MAV platform codenamed ‘KayLion’ developed by the National University of Singapore (NUS) is able to perform autonomous flight with pre-planned path tracking. The vision-based...