Design of a mechanism for biaxial rotation of a wing for a hovering vehicle

This paper presents a novel mechanism to actuate the wings of a hovering micro air vehicle (MAV). The mechanism uses a single actuator, but each wing can rotate about two orthogonal axes. The goal of this work is to design a light-weight compact mechanism that flaps the wings, inspired from the wing motion of hummingbird and hovering insects, to generate enough lift for the vehicle to hover. This paper explains in detail the proposed mechanism and its working prototypes. Also, the paper presents a dynamic simulation of the mechanism. The proposed dynamic simulation is used to predict the theoretical lift of the ornithopter. Further, the theoretical model is supported by actual experimental data collected from the prototype. The experimental data shows that the vehicle has the potential to develop enough lift to hover.