Tailless insect-mimicking flapping-wing micro air vehicle: A review and perspective

This paper provides a review and perspective of an insect-mimicking tailless flapping-wing micro air vehicle (FW-MAV), beginning with identifying key differences between bird-like FW-MAVs and insect-like tailless FW-MAVs. Unlike bird-like FW-MAVs, insect-like FW-MAVs have no control surfaces on a tail; thus, flapping wings must produce flight force and control movement simultaneously. Since the objective of insect-like FW-MAVs is to fly in a nearby area and gather information, they must hover and perform agile maneuvering. In the sense that rotary-wing MAVs (RW-MAVs), also known as multi-rotor drones, can hover, insect-like FW-MAVs and RW-MAVs may have similar mission profiles. Due to the technical difficulty of designing and building a tailless FW-MAV, RW-MAVs are much more popular in the current application of MAVs. However, tailless FW-MAVs have more research challenges than RW-MAVs. Thrust enhancement, efficiency consideration, gust response, noise reduction, and agile maneuverability should be the focus of research on real-world applications of tailless FW-MAVs. The advantages of tailless FW-MAVs over RW-MAVs might be revealed through such research, despite the popularity of RW-MAVs. © ICROS 2019.