2/1/2015 Quadcopters and

Ornithopters
By
Shoaib Shahid
Reg No. 140101096 (A)
Abstract
Today in the world of advance technology, quadcopters and ornithopters possess a great potential for
its application in aircraft structures and industry. While efforts are being made on industrial
development of these two micro UAV’s, it provides a vision of various advantages at reliable effort.
This paper provides the information about their basic working principle, their significance and their
latest and potential applications. The popularity of quadcopters and ornithopters are increasing day
by day. In recent years, the subject of flying vehicles propelled by flapping wings and rotors has been
an area of interest because of its application to micro aerial vehicles (MAVs). Although search and
research for further advancement in manufacturing technology of micro aerial vehicles have been
going on, they possess certain drawbacks regarding manufacturing and development. However, the
use of quadcopters and ornithopters is growing rapidly in military aviation.

Introduction
Natural fliers like birds have captivated the minds of human inventors through history. Research and
development of unmanned aerial vehicle and micro aerial vehicle are getting high attention these
days, because the application of unmanned aerial vehicle can be applied to various areas such as
rescue mission, military, agriculture and health and safety. In U.S. Coast Guard maritime search and
rescue mission, UAV that attached with infrared cameras assist the mission to search the target [1].
These miniature vehicles seek to mimic small birds and insects to achieve never before seen agility in
flight. The ease and grace with which they take to the air vastly surpasses the state of the art in
aircraft and their control systems. After making fixed wing aircrafts, the researcher in aeronautics
started taking interest in aircrafts which are of flapping wings. Flapping wing aircrafts have better
aerodynamic performance, maneuverability and hover capabilities and due to these capabilities the
flapping wing aircrafts have considerable advantage over fixed wing aircrafts [2]. A quadcopter is a
helicopter which has four equally spaced rotors, usually arranged at the corners of a square body.
Quadcopter has advantages over the conventional helicopter, where the mechanical design is simpler.
However, it certainly has some disadvantages as well, because controlling four independent rotors
has proven to be incredibly difficult and impossible without electronic assistance. The decreasing cost
of modern microprocessors has made control of quadcopters feasible for commercial and military
purposes. Besides that, quadcopter changes direction by manipulating the individual propeller’s
speed and does not require cyclic and collective pitch control [3]. So, ornithopters and quadcopters
are becoming important to aeronautics now a days because of their vast applications in avionics
industry.

Figure 2: Quadcopter Figure 1: Ornithopter

Working principle and mechanism of Quadcopter
A quadcopter is an aircraft with four main propellers that provides lift. The four motors which drives
the propeller are fixed onto a frame. The quadcopters are used exclusively for small drones and radio
controlled units today. In 1992 a French engineer, Etienne Edmond Oemichen, built and flew his
second helicopter design. This helicopter, ‘Oehmichen No.2’ had an X-shaped frame with a rotor at
each arm [4]. The quadcopter has four motors whose speed of rotation and the direction of rotation
changes according to the user desire to move the device in particular direction. The rotation of motors
changes as per the transmitted signal send from transmitter. Basically, a quadcopter is a quadcopter
helicopter which is lifted and propelled by four rotors. Unlike helicopters, they use symmetrical
blades. Quadcopter is controlled by altering pitch or rotation rate of one or more rotor discs, thereby
changing its torque, thrust and lift characteristics [5].

Motors one and four rotate in clock wise direction and motors three and two rotate in counter clock
wise direction so, creating a downward thrust which lifts the quadcopter. By changing the speed of
four rotors different movements of quadcopter are possible [5]. There are basically three types of
movement namely pitching, rolling and yawing. Pitch can be controlled by increasing and decreasing
the revolutions per minute of the front and back rotors causing a movement which causes the
quadcopter to pitch up or down. Rolling motion is controlled by changing the revolutions per minute
of the right and left rotors. By altering the revolutions per minute of the sets of counter rotating
rotors the yawing movement can be generated [6].

Applications of Quadcopter
The military use of unmanned aerial vehicles has grown because of their ability to operate in
dangerous locations while keeping their human operators at a safe distance. The UAVs also provide a
reliable long duration, cost effective, platform for reconnaissance as well as weapons. They have
grown to become an indispensable tool for the military. Quadcopters are used for surveillance and
reconnaissance by military and law enforcement agencies, as well as search and rescue mission [7]. In
Philadelphia, a dry cleaner armed with a DJI Phantom delivers free dry cleaning to one consumer a
month, buzzing disembodied shirts overhead. A book rental company in Australia is planning to
deliver the textbooks to students via quadcopters. A UK restaurant named Yo! Sushi uses drones
remote controlled by wait staff to deliver burgers precariously to customer’s tables. Dominoes is
testing pizza delivery by drone [8]. The quadcopter can be used for examining areas that would be
otherwise hard to reach for human. Many quadcopters are equipped with tools such as a GPS and
automatically leveling cameras. “We have mounted GoPro cameras on them so that we can take
aerial photos” said Duane Foust [9]. Quadcopters have others various applications. The largest use of
quadcopters has been in the field of aerial imagery [8]. Quadcopter UAVs are suitable for this job
because of their autonomous nature and huge cost savings. There are also some other creative uses of
quadcopters which are difficult to perform practically. It could be a solution for the worried parents of
an independent son to follow him to the bus stop with a drone and take video ensuring that he is safe.
In short, with a little imagination and some funding companies have found dozen of applications with
quadcopter. Long and short of the story is that quadcopters can deliver your laundry. Entertain your
kids. Send you a pizza. They can save your life. They are quadcopters drones and they are getting
people excited about robotics again [8].

Working principle and mechanism of Ornithopter

An ornithopter is an aircraft heavier than air which flies like a bird by flapping its wings. The special
feature lies in the wings that not only generate the lift but also the thrust. On a stretched wing, lift is
generated similar to an inflexible airfoil which is flown against from the front. At upstroke, airflow hits
the wing rather from above and at downstroke rather from bottom [10]. These changes are small in
area of wing root and gets bigger towards the wing tip. With the permanent changing twisting, the
flapping wing must adapt to these alternating incoming flow directions. Nevertheless, the lift
distribution is modified along the spam.
At the wing downstroke, the lift distribution is bigger altogether than when gliding and more shifted
towards the wing tip [11]. So, thrust is generated along the whole wing span during stroke motion. At
the wing upstroke, the circumstances are reversed. Overall, lift distribution is similar and more shifted
towards the wing root [12]. Moving in the direction of the lift force, the flapping wing now acts as a
wind turbine blade. If the lift force is big enough, it presses the wing upwards even without a
mechanical drive. So, the wing operates with the operating drag of a wind turbine against the flight
direction [11]. The total thrust gets bigger the more lift distributions of the up and down stroke are
different from each other. If the difference is zero, the total thrust also gets equal to zero. At an
existing lift difference the thrust is also increased with increased flapping frequency and flapping
amplitude [10].

Advantages of flapping wings over fixed wings

Over the past few years, the interest in small unmanned aerial vehicles has increased greatly. Most of
the UAVs in production and use today are fixed wing airplanes, which means these are planes which
employ traditional methods to produce lift and thrust: a propeller for thrust and rigidly attached
wings to produce lift. However, there is a realm of UAVs that is just beginning to be explored, those
which utilizes flapping wings. These type of vehicles are known as ornithopters. Need for the
development of ornithopter is based on the argument that flapping wing flight is more efficient than
traditional fixed wing. Flapping wing flight more closely mimics natural flight and has potential for
being lower in weight and having greater endurance [13]. In addition, strategic and stealth
applications for flapping wing vehicles are evident as well, as they mimic natural flyers and could steal
their presence. Thus, flapping wing air vehicles may provide a significant advantage over their fixed
wing counterparts especially in tactical military applications [13]. The flexible nature of membrane
type wings can actually increase aerodynamic stability by damping unsteady forces and storing elastic
energy [14]. Flapping wing has many advantages. One of those advantage is the generation of lift and
thrust without excessive size or weight [15]. The main advantage of flexible wing is that they facilitate
shape adaptation, essentially adapting to airflow to produce a smoother flight. The wing changes
shape as a function of angle of attack and wind speed [16].

Applications of Ornithopter
Ornithopters have many practical applications. Because ornithopters can be made to resemble birds
or insects, they could use for military applications such as aerial reconnaissance without alerting the
enemies that they are under surveillance. In 2011, Aero Vironment Inc. announced a remotely piloted
ornithopter resembling a large hummingbird for possible spy missions [17]. In March 2011, engineers
at the festo bionic learning network introduced a robotic smartbird based on motion of seagull. The
smartbird weighs only 450 grams and is controlled by a radio handset. On video, its flight seems very
realistic [18]. In 2014, clear flight solutions a spin-off of the University of Twente, Started Making
Artificial birds of prey for airports as well as agricultural and waste management industry [19].

Conclusions
In this paper, details regarding quadcopters and ornithopters has been presented. The paper will help
to understand the working principle, mechanism and the significance and advantages of these two
micro aerial vehicles. Quadcopters and ornithopters are getting great attention these days due to
their numerous advantages. In future, the quadcopters might be used enormously. They might be
used to charge our mobile phones according to the research of university of Nebraska. German
scientists believe that technology will be efficient to save human life. The flapping wing is a
specialized breed of flying machines that mimics the natural flyers. As such, these special flights need
a focused approach to analyze aerodynamic aspects of natural flight. Various researches and studies
highlighted that a flexible wing of an ornithopter is highly adaptive which reduce the power
consumption and indicative of high propulsive efficiency. With the advent of advance technologies,
easier and simple systems may evolve with light weight flexible wings that can become a conventional
flying machine of the future with additive stealth dimension. In short, we can say that the future will
be of these two unmanned micro aerial vehicles ornithopters and quadcopters.

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