Design and Fabrication of autonomous flapping wing unmanned air vehicle for surveillance and aerial photography

PI: Prof. Debopam Das

Co-PI: Prof. K.S. Venkatesh, Prof. Abhishek.

Flapping wing micro/mini air vehicle research is an ongoing activity of the Unsteady Aerodynamics Laboratory of the Department of Aerospace Engineering, IIT Kanpur. Prof.  Debopam Das and his students have developed a design methodology for building flapping wing MAV with the support from 'National Programme of Micro-air-vehicle (NPMICAV)' of AR&DB and DST. Prof. Das and his student Joydeep Bhowmik have successfully built several flying birds including hovering bird with wing span of 30cm to 100cm.  The current project, aims at taking this research forward by building an autonomous, 1.5m wing span flying bird which will carry a small camera as payload and will able to take pictures for surveillance. Prof. Abhishek will focus on making the bird autonomous while Prof. K. S. Venkatesh's attention will be on the image capture and surveillance.