Journal of Bionic Engineering (2021) 18:1291–1303 https://doi.org/10.1007/s42235-021-00085-w

Development of a Bird-like Flapping-wing Aerial Vehicle with Autonomous Take-of and Landing Capabilities 

Dongfu Ma1,2 · Bifeng Song1  · Zhihe Wang1,3 · Jianlin Xuan1,2 · Dong Xue1,3

1 School of Aeronautics, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi’an 710072, China
2 Yangtze River Delta Research Institute of Northwestern Polytechnical University, Taicang 215400, China
3 Research & Development Institute of Northwestern Polytechnical University in Shenzhen, Shenzhen 518057, China 

Abstract  The lack of autonomous take-of and landing capabilities of bird-like fapping-wing aerial vehicles (BFAVs) seriously restricts their further development and application. Thus, combined with the current research results on the autonomous take-of and landing technology of unmanned aerial vehicles, four types of technologies are studied, including jumping take-of and landing technology, taxiing take-of and landing technology, gliding take-of and landing technology, and vertical take-of and landing (VTOL) technology. Based on the analytic hierarchy process (AHP)–comprehensive evaluation method, a fuzzy comprehensive evaluation model for the autonomous take-of and landing scheme of a BFAV is established, and four schemes are evaluated concretely. The results show that under the existing technical conditions, the hybrid layout VTOL scheme is the best. Furthermore, the detailed design and development of the prototype of a BFAV with a four-rotor hybrid layout are carried out, and the vehicle performance is tested. The results prove that through the four-rotor hybrid layout design, the BFAV has good autonomous take-of and landing abilities. The power consumption analysis shows that for a fxed-point reconnaissance mission, when the mission radius is less than 3.38 km, the VTOL type exhibits longer mission duration than the hand-launched type. 

Keywords Bird-like fapping-wing aerial vehicle (BFAV) · Autonomous take-of and landing · Take-of mechanism · Hybrid layout

Hierarchical model