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Different from birds, bats, flies, and other flying creatures that generate propulsions by flapping a pair of wings, butterflies with two pairs of wings have their peculiar flight aerodynamics. In this article, a servo-driven biomimetic robotic butterfly, named USTButterfly, is designed to study the flight mechanism of biological butterflies. First, instead of using a single actuator to drive two pairs of wings, two servos are introduced to independently drive the left and right wings, thereby realizing tailless control of the robotic butterfly. Next, a bionic airfoil is designed inspired by the wing structure of the glasswing butterfly. Wing geometry analysis indicates that USTButterfly well matches the morphological characteristics of biological butterflies. Finally, a multicamera motion capture system is used to measure the flight characteristics of the robotic butterfly, and the results demonstrate that despite a larger Reynolds number, USTButterfly shares a similar coupled wing–body interaction with biological butterflies in the climbing flight. USTButterfly opens up a new way to study the flight specializations of biological butterflies, and offers a potential alternative paradigm for existing unmanned aerial vehicles.
Huang et al. (2023) studied this question.