Flappy
The Manta-ray Inspired Flapping-wing Blimp
Motivation
Lighter-than-air vehicles or blimps, are an evolving platform in robotics with several beneficial properties such as energy efficiency, collision resistance, and ability to work in close proximity to human users. Since existing blimp designs have mainly used propeller-based propulsion, our main research motivation is to explore an alternate locomotion method, namely flapping wings. Specifically, this project focuses on a flapping-wing blimp inspired by manta rays.
Components
The current design uses the following components that are all available off the shelf except for the two 3D printed parts:
91.4 cm diameter ellipsoidal balloons x 2
S51 9g plastic gear servos x 3
Adafruit ESP32 Feather microcontroller
2s 300 mAh LiPo battery
1.5 mm carbon-fiber rods
light & flexible sheet for wing surface
3D printed servo-motor mount
3D printed wing-servo attachment
Control
Flappy is controlled using a gamepad.
Speed control: the throttle stick controls the flapping amplitude and frequency to modulate the forward thrust
Yaw control: L/R stick changes the thrust generated from the two wings to turn in vertical axis (thrust differential)
Pitch control: U/D stick moves the tail up and down generating pitch moment when Flappy has forward speed
Altitude control: altitude is controlled through the pitch angle similar to fixed-wing vehicles
Performance
Flappy has a top speed of around 1~1.5 m/s
With 2s 300 mAh LiPo battery, Flappy can fly nearly 40 minutes giving the range of about 2.4 km
Flappy can perform backflip with sufficiently large tail mounted in elevator configuration
STEM Outreach
The low cost and simplicity of Flappy make it a perfect platform for STEM outreach. The components for each Flappy is less than $100, and a non-STEM high-school students are able to make one from scratch in about three hours (with 3D printed parts provided). We have already brought Flappy to summer camp programs in 2023 with great success.
Ongoing work
We are excited to continue the development of Flappy in various directions including
Advanced flapping mechanism
Inclusion of autonomy
Miniaturization
Better user interface
Resources
More videos on Flappy and other blimps can be found in our youtube channel
Preprint of our research publication on Flappy available on arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2310.10853
Reach out to dshishik[at]gmu.edu for more information