Untethered flight of an insect-sized flapping-wing microscale aerial vehicle

Noah T. Jafferis (), E. Farrell Helbling, Michael Karpelson and Robert J. Wood
Additional contact information
Noah T. Jafferis: Harvard University
E. Farrell Helbling: Harvard University
Michael Karpelson: Harvard University
Robert J. Wood: Harvard University

Nature, 2019, vol. 570, issue 7762, 491-495

Abstract: Abstract Heavier-than-air flight at any scale is energetically expensive. This is greatly exacerbated at small scales and has so far presented an insurmountable obstacle for untethered flight in insect-sized (mass less than 500 milligrams and wingspan less than 5 centimetres) robots. These vehicles1–4 thus need to fly tethered to an offboard power supply and signal generator owing to the challenges associated with integrating onboard electronics within a limited payload capacity. Here we address these challenges to demonstrate sustained untethered flight of an insect-sized flapping-wing microscale aerial vehicle. The 90-milligram vehicle uses four wings driven by two alumina-reinforced piezoelectric actuators to increase aerodynamic efficiency (by up to 29 per cent relative to similar two-wing vehicles5) and achieve a peak lift-to-weight ratio of 4.1 to 1, demonstrating greater thrust per muscle mass than typical biological counterparts6. The integrated system of the vehicle together with the electronics required for untethered flight (a photovoltaic array and a signal generator) weighs 259 milligrams, with an additional payload capacity allowing for additional onboard devices. Consuming only 110–120 milliwatts of power, the system matches the thrust efficiency of similarly sized insects such as bees7. This insect-scale aerial vehicle is the lightest thus far to achieve sustained untethered flight (as opposed to impulsive jumping8 or liftoff9).

Date: 2019
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-019-1322-0 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:nature:v:570:y:2019:i:7762:d:10.1038_s41586-019-1322-0

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/

DOI: 10.1038/s41586-019-1322-0

Access Statistics for this article

Nature is currently edited by Magdalena Skipper

More articles in Nature from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().