3D-Printed Flexible Wings With Metamaterial Functionalities

Insects flapping flight has been inspiring generations of scientists to understand its peculiarities and, since recently, to develop maneuverable flying micro vehicles. Full-field modelling and detailed experiments have unveiled key mechanisms of the flight dynamics, flow and noise generation around wings and enabled practical realizations of artificial flying devices. Here, we propose the metamaterial-based design of a flapping wing and an optimization method to control the flight characteristics though variations of geometric parameters. The successful experimental validation of 3D-printed samples suggests that our design are promising for additively manufactured flapping-wing-based flying robots.