Research

This research aims to investigate how the wing folding/unfolding mechanism supports the beetle to mitigate in-flight collision impact. Adapting the beetle’s hindwing, I built a passive-folding wing on a flapping-wing robot, thereby enabling it to fly safely through a narrow gap after collisions.

This research aims to study and develop a tailless, two-winged, centimeter-scale, insect-inspired flapping-wing micro robot that can freely perform hover and agile maneuvers, simulating the flight of a horned beetle. As fruit of a long-term research, in 2016, I succeeded in flying the 21 g KUBeetle robot, which can actively modulate its wing kinematics for flight stability without tail control surfaces. In 2019, its modified version, 16 g KUBeetle-S robot, could remain about 9 minutes in the air, making it the lightest two-winged robot so far that can sustain free controlled flight with all onboard components.

This self-motivation and independent research aims to explore the mechanisms behind the high-amplitude flapping flight of the horned beetles Allomyrina Dichotoma. I analyzed wing movement of the beetle considering the effect of wing inertia, wing rotation, stroke amplitude, and wing area to optimize the design of a similar-scale flapping-wing robot for economic flight.

This research aims to develop a bio-inspired flapping-wing-assisted jumping robot that mimic jumping insect's locomotion strategy. We have designed and demonstrated a robot that can flap the wings right after jumping using only one miniature DC motor.