Air flow senser for an insect-like flapping wing

This paper reports on a thin piezoresistive cantilever for measuring air flow velocity around flapping wings. To measure the air flow velocity at a point of the wing directly, our sensor was attached to the leading edge of the wing. The sensor was designed to be 1 mum thick. Because of the scale effect, the influence of the inertial force was small during flow measurement. The sensor had the sensitivity of 0.56 - 0.96 times 10^-3 (m/s)^-2 as well as the directivity. By using the micro flow sensor, we measured the perpendicular air flow velocity at the point of the leading edge of the wing.