Coordinated launching of an ornithopter with a hexapedal robot

In this work, we develop a cooperative launching system for a 13.2 gram ornithopter micro-aerial vehicle (MAV), the H²Bird, by carrying it on the back of a 32 gram hexapedal millirobot, the VelociRoACH. We determine the necessary initial velocity and pitch angle for take off using force data collected in a wind tunnel and use the VelociRoACH to reach these initial conditions for successful launch. In the wind tunnel predicted success region, we were able to complete a successful launch for 75 percent of the 12 trials in that region. Although carrying the H²Bird on top of the VelociRoACH at a stride frequency of 17 Hz increases our average power consumption by about 24.5 percent over solo running, the H²Bird, in turn, provides stability advantages to the VelociRoACH. We observed that the variance in pitch and roll velocity with the H²Bird is about 90 percent less than without. Additionally, with the H²Bird flapping at 5 Hz during transport, we observed an increase of 12.7 percent of the steady state velocity. Lastly, we found that the costs of transport for carrying the H²Bird flapping and without (6.6 and 6.8) are lower than the solo costs of transport for the VelociRoACH and for the H²Bird (8.1 and 10.1).