I am proposing an autonomous ornithopter as a longterm project in RMI

An ornithopter is in simplest terms a mechanical bird that flies by flapping it's wings contrary to that of an aeroplane or a quadcopter

I wanted to work on applying reinforcement learning on a robot and also have wanted to work on aerial robotics. for a while i thought of working on the Drone but one day I came across this video

[](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zH61W-Dcf0k Ornithopter )

There are several reasons for me not choosing the drone as my project instead of working on the drone

the flapping mechanism will be actuated by a single BLDC motor and there will be a gearbox for the necessary reductions

there are several other mechanisms but this is the one currently in my mind but I have'nt done the math regarding the gearbox so I don't know how good this is but this was the most commonly one I ound

I plan on using a Raspberry pi zero with ubuntu core and ros

it is a smaller and cheaper raspberry_pi but still has wifi capabilities and can run ros

then I will interface an atmega328p(NOT YET FINAL could be any ucontroller) ic with the pi_0 to output 3 pwm there will be a pan and tilt mechanism at the tail end to control the roll and pitch of the ornithopter The final bot will look a lot like this

patapata ornithopter by takemura

the kestrel ornithopter

when the application requires high maneuverability and efficiency

• surveilance applications like navigating inside a forest for observing wildlife

• A fixed wing aircraft can never match the maneuverability of an ornithopter

• scaling issues

• insect flight based models are not very efficient