Traditional lighter-than-air-vehicles (LTAV), i.e., airships, are propelled by propellers. In this paper, an indoor LTAV “flying octopus” with four flapping wings is designed and built. The flying octopus has three parts: the balloon, midsection, and the wings. The balloon is filled with helium. Its buoyance is used to balance the major part of the flying octopus’s gravity. The midsection connects the balloon and the wings, and also holds the actuators, control board and power system. Four flapping wings are identical and each wing is composed of a continuous backbone, a membrane, a pair of wires and a number of eyelets. The flapping motion is achieved by the novel wire-driven mechanism. A prototype with a total mass of 1592g is built. The motion of the flying octopus is controlled by the four wings. Indoor experiment results show that, with the four flapping wings, the flying octopus can go in all directions, i.e., forward, backward, leftward, rightward, upward, and downward effectively.
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ASME 2012 International Mechanical Engineering Congress and Exposition
November 9–15, 2012
Houston, Texas, USA
Conference Sponsors:
- ASME
ISBN:
978-0-7918-4520-2
PROCEEDINGS PAPER
Flying Octopus — A LTAV With Wire-Driven Flapping Wings
Zheng Li,
Zheng Li
The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China
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Ruxu Du,
Ruxu Du
The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China
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Yupei Yao
Yupei Yao
The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China
Search for other works by this author on:
Zheng Li
The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China
Ruxu Du
The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China
Yupei Yao
The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China
Paper No:
IMECE2012-87408, pp. 289-295; 7 pages
Published Online:
October 8, 2013
Citation
Li, Z, Du, R, & Yao, Y. "Flying Octopus — A LTAV With Wire-Driven Flapping Wings." Proceedings of the ASME 2012 International Mechanical Engineering Congress and Exposition. Volume 4: Dynamics, Control and Uncertainty, Parts A and B. Houston, Texas, USA. November 9–15, 2012. pp. 289-295. ASME. https://doi.org/10.1115/IMECE2012-87408
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