Design and fabrication of an insect-scale flying robot for control autonomy

Abstract

Without sufficient payload capacity to carry necessary electronic components, flying robots at the scale of insects cannot fly autonomously. Using a simple scaling heuristic to determine a few salient vehicle properties, we develop a vehicle design that possesses the requisite payload capacity for the full suite of required components for control autonomy. We construct the vehicle using state-of-the-art methods, producing a 380 mg vehicle with a 115 mg payload capacity, and demonstrate controlled hovering of the fully-loaded vehicle. The payload-capable vehicle demonstrated here establishes a scalable vehicle design and validates current fabrication methods, laying a foundation for an eventual, fully-integrated robotic system.