Host: The Japan Society of Mechanical Engineers
Name : [in Japanese]
Date : June 05, 2019 - June 08, 2019
A variety of biomimetic underwater swimming robots which do not employ a conventional rotational propeller as a propulsion system have been developed. It is still challenging, however, to satisfy both high-speed and high-mobility performances. Here, we proposed a flapping-wing propulsion mechanism inspired by penguins. In this mechanism, a wing is driven by three servo motors to realize 3-DoF (degree of freedom) rotational motion, enabling active control of AoA (angle of attack) of the wing. The relationship between the amplitude of AoA and thrust of the mechanism was tested in a water tunnel where the mechanism was fixed to a load cell. It was found that the thrust of the flapping wing was maximized when the AoA was set to 25° which was higher than that maximized lift-to-drag ratio for the fixed wing.
