Research Progress in Bat-Inspired Flapping Wing Aerial Vehicle

Bionic flapping wing aerial vehicle (FWAV) has been widely concerned in recent years due to its high aerodynamic efficiency in low Reynolds number flight. Bats are capable of diverse flight performance and able to achieve complex manoeuvres in nature. Moreover, the inborn tailless feature makes the bat an excellent object for imitation of the tailless flying wing configuration, which probably has benefits such as low structural mass, good aerodynamic characteristics. This paper provided a brief review of researches up to date in related to bat-inspired FWAVs. The content of literature review is consisting of three parts: Sect. 2 focus on researches into the kinematics and flight parameters such as flapping frequency and amplitude of animal bats. The relationship between the flight parameters and body mass is discovered. Section 3 introduced the research progress in aerodynamics in terms of animal bats as well as the bat-inspired FMAVs. In Sect. 4, some of the typical conceptual design methodology up to date is firstly introduced, then a series of design concept of bat-inspired FWAVs are provided. Suggestion for prospective future works are provided at the end of the paper.