Design of a Spatial Six-Bar Flapping Wing Mechanism for Combined Control of Swing and Pitch

This paper presents a design procedure to achieve a flapping wing mechanism for a micro air vehicle that drives both the swing and pitch movement of the wing with one actuator. The mechanism combines a planar four bar linkage with a spatial RSSR attached to the input and output links forming a spatial Stephenson six-bar linkage. Function generation synthesis yields a planar four-bar that controls the wing swing profile. The pitch control is synthesized by inverting the movement of the combined system to isolate and compute the SS chain. In order to ensure the design achieves the specified task precision points, the SS chain was randomized within a prescribed tolerance zone. The result was 29 designs, one of which is presented in detail.