Four wing flapping micro air vehicles - Dragonies or X-wings?

The aerodynamic feats of dragonies are well documented. However, human beings have created ying vehicles that do not mimic nature, e.g. helicopters and quad-rotors. The paper presents initial investigations, via simulations, into the dynamics of a four wing, apping wing micro-air vehicle. The paper attempts to answer the question of whether four wings in a traditional setup, akin to a dragony, is more, or less, beneficial than a 'x-wing' configuration. The micro-air vehicle is modeled as a system of five connected rigid bodies, a central body and four wings. The equations of motion are derived using D'Alembert's Principle for Multiple Rigid Bodies. Each wing is given three separate degrees of freedom relative to the central body. Open loop simulations are presented using the full nonlinear equations of motion, which include the inertial effects of the wings on the central body. Simulations show that an 'x-wing' configuration and a 'revised' dragony configuration may provide better, inherent stability than a biomimetic vehicle modeled after a dragony. Simulations of the two configurations show better pitch stability than a biomimetic simulation and the 'revised' dragony exhibits outstanding stability and lift characteristics.