Students set to add vision capabilities to 17g remotely controlled vehicle
A flapping-wing micro unmanned air vehicle (MAV) weighing just 17g and with a wingspan of 330mm (13in) flew successfully at the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands last month.
The remotely controlled Delfly, which has four wings and an inverted V-tail for its control surfaces, flew at about 1.5m/s (295ft/min) for 12min, powered by a 3.7V lithium polymer battery.
“We made a very smooth landing on the landing skids,” says Stefan Jongerius of the Delfly development team. “We expect to have three other improved vehicles soon, and this week the vision capabilities will be working.”
An electric motor turns a gear at the front of the craft that actuates two armatures, moving the wings on each side in a clapping motion.
The fuselage is a hollow tube of carbonfibre-reinforced plastic and the wing spars are balsa wood reinforced with carbonfibre. The control surfaces are moved using wire attached to magnetic servomotors. In future, Flexinol or Nitinol wires will be used. These are made of a shape-memory alloy that contracts when a potential difference is applied by heat from a current.
The MAV was designed and built by 11 students from Delft’s faculty of aerospace engineering. They are also developing the autonomous flight-control system, which will be vision-based and uses a neural network to identify targets such as windows, through which the MAV would enter buildings.
The Delfly will appear at the US Army’s US-European MAV technology demonstration event in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany, this month.
Source: Flight International
