The purpose of this paper is to present the procedure and results from instrumented flight test performed on the flapping MAVs being developed by the authors. A test is performed using a test measurement system to obtain the real characteristics of the flapping vehicles during their flight.
The test is performed in an indoor flight test facility, equipped with a motion capture system and tracking cameras. Spatial position data are obtained from the vehicles with retro‐reflective tracking markers attached. A quantitative analysis is carried out through the investigation and interpretation of the test data for the flight performance assessment of the vehicles.
The finding of the analysis addresses that the test enabled the numerical measurement of vehicles' flying performance and shows the present vehicles have combined characteristics of both birds and insects.
The test metrics attempted in the present study are applicable to the test and evaluation of general flapping micro air vehicles. Thus, this testing method will be useful for the development of future micro air vehicle system.
Full‐scale instrumented flight test and measurement of performance parameters of flapping micro air vehicles other than visual observation are unprecedented and expected to present the guideline of systematic test and evaluation of flapping micro air vehicles.
