WELCOME TO THE

UAH MARSBEE PROJECT

Working to Develop a Swarm of Flapping Wing Flyers for Enhanced Mars Exploration

Early-stage proposal for “Marsbees” selected to receive NASA funding

A proposal on Marsbees submitted by Dr. Chang-kwon Kang, an assistant professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at The University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH), was one of only 25 selected to receive a 2018 NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) award. Dr. Kang’s collaborators on the proposal include Drs. Farbod Fahimi, Brian Landrum, and Guangsheng Zhang from UAH’s Department of Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering; Dr. Bryan Mesmer from UAH’s Department of Industrial & Systems Engineering and Engineering Management; Dr. Rob Griffin from UAH’s Department of Atmospheric Science; Dr. Taeyoung Lee from George Washington University’s School of Engineering & Applied Science; and Dr. Aono Hikaru from the Tokyo University of Science.

"We are very excited about this opportunity," says Dr. Kang. "Flying on Mars is challenging because of the ultra-low density in the Martian atmosphere. Our preliminary work shows that bioinspired aerodynamic mechanisms can help in generating sufficient lift to fly on Mars."

Flapping Wing Flyer? Why and what for?

To explore Mars. The proposal seeks to increase the set of possible exploration and science missions on Mars by investigating the feasibility of flapping-wing aerospace architectures in a Martian environment.

At its center is the Marsbee, a robotic bumble-bee-sized flapping-wing flyer whose large cicada-like wings have the ability to generate sufficient lift to hover in the Martian atmosphere. Integrated with sensors and wireless communication devices, these flyers would work in a swarm, with a mobile base serving as their recharging station and a main communication center.

"One of our main goals for the first phase is to experimentally demonstrate that these Marsbees can lift off their own weight in Martian density conditions in the vacuum chamber of UAH’s Propulsion Research Center.

Our long-term overarching goal is to develop swarms of Marsbees that can help with the human exploration on Mars."

The swarm of Marsbee can significantly enhance the Mars exploration mission with the following benefits:

Facilitating reconfigurable sensor networks
Creation of resilient systems
Sample or data collection using single or collaborative Marsbees

What are the key technical innovations in this project?

Using insect-like compliant wings will enhance aerodynamics and a low power design. High lift coefficients will be realized by by way of a dynamic similarity between the bioinspired insect flight regime and the Mars environment.

Preliminary results suggest that a bumblebee with a cicada wing can generate sufficient lift to hover in the Martian atmosphere. The innovative energy harvesting mechanism and compliant wing structure substantially reduces Marsbee's power requirements. Because of the ultra-low Martian density, the power is dominated by the inertial power. A torsional spring mounted at the wing root to temporarily store otherwise wasted energy and reduce the overall inertial power at resonance. Whereas rotary wing concepts are much more mature in both design and control, these two innovations are uniquely suited to bioinspired flapping vehicles and provide flying near the Martian terrain as a viable means of mobility.

Applying Systems Engineering Principles

From a systems engineering perspective, the Marsbee offers many benefits over traditional aerospace systems. The smaller volume, designed for the interplanetary spacecraft payload configuration, provides much more flexibility. The Marsbee inherently offers more robustness to individual system failures. Because of its relatively small size and the small volume of airspace needed to test the system, it can be validated in a variety of accessible testing facilities.

Phase I Objective

With this Phase I award, we want to determine the wing design, motion, and weight that can hover with optimal power in Mars’ atmospheric conditions and to assess the hummingbird micro-air vehicle – one of only a few robotic flappers in the world that can fly on Earth – in Mars conditions. Our UAH colleagues will numerically model, analyze, and optimize a flapping flyer for Martian atmospheric conditions, while our Japanese colleagues will develop and test a micro-flapping robot that is uniquely designed and constructed for the low-density atmosphere on Mars.

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