Flying Wing Drones based on Cricket Antennas

Walid Hassairi and Mohamed Abid

CES Laboratory, National School of Engineers of Sfax, Tunisia

Keywords: Drones with Flying Wings, Cricket, Biometric Flow Camera, UAVs for Wireless Networks, Unmanned Aerial.

Abstract: Drones represent an important part of the shipsets’ domain. There are different application areas and

depending on the field of application, problems of stability, trajectory correction and autonomy arise. The

flying wings drones are one of the drones’ categories inspired from birds flying technique. This category of

drones has several problems quite different from the classical drones. Among these problems we can identify

the drone hunter issue. To solve this problem, we propose a solution inspired from the wood crickets. In fact,

the crickets are extremely fast as they can process information locally. They have a kind of “back brains” that

process the information locally and control the movement of their legs. Unlike human who strictly send all

information to the main brain that treat them and make a reaction, the cricket has several brains inside the

body, so that it can send the information about the airflow to small brains behind its legs. These little back

brains not only process the information about the airflow that comes from the crests and their multiple hairs,

but also controls the movement of the rear legs. This unusual performance of the crickets’ crests hair was the

origin of our research contribution. We therefore propose a biometric flow camera based on several electronic

hairs connected together. We have selected REMANTA as a winged drone to implement our proposed

solution. We will integrate our micro-sensors in this 10 cm dimensions drone to solve three problems:

trajectory correction, stability, and enemy avoidance.

1 INTRODUCTION

Nowadays, the performance of embedded electronics

is increasing in a regular way, going hand by hand

with a more and more advanced miniaturization.

Consequently, a great interest is today given to “mini

or micro-drones” based on miniaturized sensors and

embedded systems. These kinds of drones have major

advantages when used in congested environments or

small spaces (urban) in which larger rotorcraft are not

well suited. Several rotorcraft architectures are

available depending on the number and arrangement

of rotors.

Numerous devices have been developed in recent

years in robotics. These devices are equipped with

different on-board sensors and used in several

application fields such as: civil security, police,

customs, military, agriculture, medicine, transport,

control, surveillance, etc. Among these devices, we

mention drones, smart cars, industrial robots, etc. The

navigation of these devices is only possible thanks to

the location and realtime orientation using onboard

sensors. In this paper, we enumerate the diverse

problems facing flying-wing drones and present a

solution to avoid the enemy. The solution aims to

provide a good and efficient motion estimation task

regardless the disturbances in the field. This solution

is based on the information coming from sensors,

inspired from the cricket antennas.

2 RELATED WORK

A drone is a small device that does not exceed the

dimension of 50 by 50 cm and weighting between

300g to 500g (see Figure 1). The drone includes 4

engines and a Lithium Polymer battery rechargeable

every 980 minutes (Hayat et al., 2016, Gupta et al.,

2015, Motlagh et al., 2016, Mozaffari et al. 2019).

Figure 1: The drone.

Hassairi, W. and Abid, M.

Flying Wing Drones based on Cricket Antennas.

DOI: 10.5220/0010436903530358

In Proceedings of the 18th International Conference on Informatics in Control, Automation and Robotics (ICINCO 2021), pages 353-358

ISBN: 978-989-758-522-7

353

The heart of the drone is an electronic card, such

as ARDUINO or STM32Fx, which ensures different

actions (see Figure 2):

•

Read the flight parameters.

•

Read the detector data that describe the

rotations and displacements in three

dimensions: This is the role of the

accelerometer and the gyroscope.

•

Provide speed correction to each motor

(Motlagh et al., 2016, Khawaja et al., 2019,

Khuwaja et al., 2018, Zeng et al., 2016,

Kumbhar et al., 2016, Kelly, 2017).

Figure 2: Drone characteristics.

A drone or quadrotor has four rotors. The role of

these rotors is to rotate the drone around the vertical

axis and modify its vertical acceleration. To ensure

the stability of the drone, two propellers must be

turned in one direction and the two others in the

opposite direction.

There exist several types of drones, among them

we can find:

• Fixed wing drone: The fixed-wing drone can

reach 80 km/h and can fly for 45 minutes. In

addition to its light weight (it weighs 700

grams), its two wings are removable. It was

designed to ease manual transport. In addition,

it allows to capture photos as it has a camera

equipped with a high-resolution sensor of 14

mega pixels and an optical stabilizer (Sebbane,

2015, Korchenko and Illyash, 2013).

• Rotating wing drone: They are miniature

rotary wing drones that perform propulsion

and lift separately (reactor or propeller, and

fixed wing). Rotary wing drones use the same

body for propulsion and lift (rotors). Thanks to

this feature, this type of miniature UAV is

capable of vertical landing and takeoff, as well

as hovering or quasi- stationary flight, opening

a wide field to new applications (Al-Hourani

et al., 2014, Valcarce et al., 2013, Reynaud

and Rasheed, 2014, Tozer and Grace, 2001).

• Flying wing drone: A micro-drone or micro-

aerial vehicle is a craft less than 15 cm and

even 1 cm in length, width and height, capable

of flying. Recently, research has focused on

the development of swing-wing micro-drones

(see Figure 3). In fact, progress in

microelectronics has influenced the

manufacture of micro actuators, sensors,

communication systems, batteries, processors,

and so on, favorizing the evolution of this type

of drones (Chmaj and Selvaraj, 2015,

Zuckerberg, 2014, Gettinger, 2016).

Figure 3: Remanta flying wing drone.

3 DEFINITION OF A

FLYING-WING DRONE

Swinging wings are an alternative propulsion system

for mini and micro-drones. The flapping of wings

reproduces the flight of birds (see Figure 4) or insects

(see Figure 5).

Figure 4: Micro-drones with flapping wings (birds).

An insect consists mainly of three parts (Reynaud

and Rasheed, 2014): head, thorax, and abdomen. The

head contains vision sensors (ocelli and compound

eyes), antennas (sense organs: smell, touch, taste) and

mouthparts (to pierce, suck, suck, or chew). The chest

consists of three parts (pro, mesa, and meta-thorax) to

which are attached the legs, wings and dumbbells.

Figure 5: Micro-drones with swinging wings (insect).

3.1 The Flying Wing Movement

The wing of an insect has several degrees of freedom:

beat, rotation, orientation of the beat plane

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(deflection), frequency and other degrees more

difficult to model such as bending and twisting. In this

work, the degrees of freedom considered are the

amplitudes of the angles of beat and rotation, the wing

is supposed to beat in the plane of median beat, with

a frequency of 100 Hz.

•

Degrees of freedom: The wing of the micro-

drone is considered as a rigid body which

has three degrees of freedom in rotation: the

beat, the rotation and the deviation.

•

Para-measurement of the wings: The control of

the micro- drone is done by acting on the

corners of its wings. Indeed, the flapping of the

wings creates the aerodynamic forces which is

generated following the movement of the

machine (Mazur et al., 2016).

•

Decomposition of the movement of a flying

wing: There are different variants of the flying

theory, but in general, the theory is only highly

simplified because the calculation of the

equilibrium forces remains difficult. The

aerodynamics of swing wings is more unstable

than other types of wings (see Figure 6).

Figure 6: Representation of forces exerted during a flight.

A flying wing is an aerodynamic machine with

two working times, the flapping of the wing in

elevation and its slaughter.

•

Elevation: The air hits the wing rather than

coming from the top during the beat.

•

The slaughter: the air hits the wing coming

from the bottom.

Swinging wings have two roles: lift and thrust. Lift

is the component of the force the device experiences

when moving in a fluid and acting perpendicular to the

direction of that movement. The thrust, meanwhile, is

the force exerted by the movement of the air and which

allows the displacement.

3.2 Types of Forces

There are 3 types of forces:

•

Stationary aerodynamic force: The stationary

aerodynamic force is generated by the air

pressure exerted on a flapping wing. It is

oriented in the opposite direction to the speed

of the wing.

•

Strength of added masses: Considering that the

wing is formed of a single slice, the intensity

of the force is due to the effects of added

masses during the rotation of the wing.

•

Rotational force: The wings are supposed to be

rigid and present only movements of flapping

and rotation. Bending phenomena, difficult to

model, are not considered.

3.3 Examples of Flying Wing Drones

3.3.1 Remanta

It is the first French project on micro-drones with

swinging wings. It was conducted by ONERA: Office

Nationale d’Etudes et de Recherches Aronautiques

between 2002 and 2006. Its goal was to deepen the

knowledge in aerodynamics, flight mechanics, control,

actuators, materials, and structure (see Figure 7).

Figure 7: The REMANTA micro-drone.

3.3.2 Delfly

Started in 2005 in the form of a student project at the

Technological University of Delft, Netherlands. The

drone, weighing 16 g, has two pairs of wings of 28

cm wingspan, uses a DC motor and is equipped with

an onboard camera. It can fly horizontally, stationary,

and even backwards. The next phase of this project

would be the Delfly micro aiming for a 10cm

wingspan and a mass of 3g. The final objective is to

reach at the end the Delfly nano by further

minimizing the size and the energy consumption of

the craft (see Figure 8).

Figure 8: Micro Delfly.

Flying Wing Drones based on Cricket Antennas

355

3.3.3 Micro-robotic Fly

This project is carried by the Micro-robotics

laboratory at Harvard University, USA, and is also

supported by DARPA. A first prototype, 3 cm wide,

took off in 2007, only in vertical flight with an

external power supply and without control. This

machine also uses a piezoelectric actuator, but a much

more flexible structure than that of the MFI,

especially with regard to the amplification of the

displacement transmitted to the wings (see Figure 9).

Figure 9: Micro-robotic.

4 FLYING WING DRONES’

PROBLEMS

4.1 Flying Wing Drone Range

Flying drone autonomy depend largely on the wind.

Depending on the wind strength, it can sometimes

greatly reduce the flying drone autonomy. On the

other hand, flying in the wind direction, can

sometimes prevent you from returning your drone.

The risks of loss or crash are then important

(Reynaud and Rasheed, 2012).

4.2 Flying Wing Drone Flight Speed

Indoors, these machines can fly from 70 to 80 km/h,

but can exceed 170 km/h outdoors. They can reach an

average speed of 265.87 Km/h, with a peak at 288.07

Km/h. Acceleration requires perfect control of the

machine. It is sure that the weight /power ratio is

largely to the advantage of drones. High speed flight,

but stable, is less problematic than acceleration.

Especially since it is made with blades that must

move while maintaining the gear.

4.3 Flying Wing Drone Hunters

One problem that could face a flying-wing drone is

drones-hunters. A Hunter drone rely on a set of

sensors and attack tools “including a net” to secure an

area. In practice, the drone will spot an intrusion into

its coverage area, take off, locate the target, throw a

net, and bring the enemy to its base (see Figure 10).

Figure 10: Swing wing drone fighters.

There is also a new method such as training eagles

to chase a flying-wing drone (see Figure 11). The

flying-wing drones should therefore be able to avoid

drones’ hunters.

Figure 11: An eagle hunting a flying-wing drone.

5 PROPOSED APPROACH:

SOLVE THE FLYING WING

DRONES HUNTER PROBLEM

USING CRICKET ANTENNAS

The wood cricket lives in the edges or holes and it

feeds on dry leaves. When attacked by a predator, it is

able to escape in a lightning way (see Figure 12).

We think that it could be interesting to understand

the reasons for this extreme sensitivity and use it to

support the flying-wing drones.

Figure 12: The wood cricket.

Figure 13: The antennae of the wood cricket.

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When the cricket is attacked it will perceive the

flow of air that is caused by the attacker by two organs

at the back of the body called creches (see Figure 13).

These organs look like antennas on which there are a

lot of hair. The hairs on these antennas are used to

perceive the tiny vibrations of the air. Each of these

hairs is extremely powerful, it needs a tenth of the

energy of a photon to react and the insect will

combine all this information to escape before being

reached by the predator. The sensory hair of the

cricket is quite unusual because it is very simple and

at the same time extremely powerful, it is nothing but

a simple tube that will not bend when the air arrives

on it, it goes to move to its base. There is only one

neuron at the base of this hair, which is also unusual,

and it is this simplicity that makes these sensory hairs

so effective.

The cricket therefore has a kind of “back brain”

that processes the information and controls the

movement of its legs. Unlike human, who strictly send

all the information to the main brain that will treat them

and make a reaction, the cricket has several brains

inside the body, so that it will be able to send

information about the air flow to a small brain just

behind its antennas. This little brain not only processes

the information that comes from the crests and their

multiple hairs, but also controls the movement of the

legs. That’s why over millions of years, crickets have

been able to escape predators. They are extremely fast

because they process information locally. The

understanding of the extreme sensitivity of the cricket

hair is a source of inspiration from a biomechanical and

electronic point of view, in order to imagine high

performance micro-sensors. The unusual performance

of the cricket hair has motivated the objective of our

research (see Figure 14).

Figure 14: Micro-sensors.

Figure 15: Gathering the micro-sensors.

We have therefore imagined that we can connect

several electronic hairs together and this gives birth

to a biomimetic flow camera (see Figure 15).

In other words, instead of the pixels found on the

usual cameras, we will have micro sensors (similar to

cricket hairs). We will therefore have a series of

micro sensors that measure a flow image. This work,

which has a long-term or even medium-term scope,

will be useful in the context of future flying wings

drones. In fact, in this kind of systems, it is necessary

that the movement of the wing is controlled in

continuous time. The wing does not always have the

same movement, so we must be able to measure

what the wing does, especially in the case of

turbulence. And here our hairs are absolutely ideal

as they are small and can be put everywhere (see

Figure 16). We have selected REMANTA as a

winged drone to implement our proposed solution.

We will integrate our micro-sensors in this 10 cm

dimensions drone to solve three problems: trajectory

correction, stability, and enemy avoidance. We will

afterward reduce the size to reach a drone of 2 cm

using other materials that have reduced size.

Figure 16: Micro-sensors in REMANTA.

6 CONCLUSIONS AND

ONGOING WORK

In this paper, we have presented the technological

advances and the growing interest in aerial robotics

over the past ten years. The different types and forms

of air targets created by the great utility, allow to

accomplish the required tasks in complex

environments. Since the perception of the

environment is a necessary process in these tasks, the

majority of the moving drones are connected by

different sensors used to navigate and detect obstacles

during their journey. Our studied system the flying

wing drone is among these drones, that requires

sensors to control and monitor its attitude. In this

paper, we presented an overview of the different

stages of development of this project. Indeed, after

presenting the state of the art, defining the drone, their

flight mode, the different types of drone, we focused

on the flying-wing drone problems. We presented our

idea to solve the course correction and enemy escape

Flying Wing Drones based on Cricket Antennas

357

problems, inspired from the wood cricket. The

solution consists in adding micro-sensors placed in

the rear of swinging wings drones. We plan to reduce

the size to reach a 2 cm drone using other materials.

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