RC Ornithopter Flies Like a Bionic Bird

If you want to take to the skies through a remote-controlled vehicle, quadcopters, airplanes, and helicopters are the normal choices. What if you literally wanted to fly like a bird, complete with flapping wings? While such a device has been envisioned since at least the time of Leonardo da Vinci, few have been able to perfect this type of flight, and until now instructions for doing so were either not available or very difficult to find.

With this detailed project write-up, however, “Amperka Cyber Couch” has produced readily-available documentation on building this kind of robotic bird. His model uses a brushless DC (BLDC) motor and electronic speed control (ESC) to power it in a similar manner to an RC plane. Instead of propellers, though, rotational motion is reduced in a partially 3D-printed gearbox, then translated into wing motion through a linkage system. Directional control comes from the tail, where a pair of servos change its pitch and roll.

The project uses an Arduino Nano as the onboard “bird brain,” and communicates to an Arduino Uno base station via MBee 868 modules. You can see the ornithopter in flight here and the build process will be outlined in more detail in a video series starting with the clip below.