Development and Control of Micro-Ionic Thrusters for Centimeter-Scale Aerial Robots

Abstract

As we go smaller and smaller, we take inspiration from Biology to design our Engineered machines. Currently, most centimeter-scale aerial robots use complicated, failure-prone insect-inspired flapping-wing mechanisms to propel themselves. In Electrohydrodynamics (EHD), corona discharge generates a flow of ions in an electric field between two electrodes; the high-velocity ions transfer their kinetic energy to neutral air molecules through collisions, accelerating the gas and thus creating thrust. This mechanism produces thrust without the need for any moving parts, scales favorably with diminishing size, and is a sparsely explored propulsion mechanism. In this work, laser-based microfabrication of EHD-thruster is explored. Following this, high-voltage Pulse-Width-Modulation (PWM) (achieved using a high-voltage power MOSFET) is established as a means of modulating thrust with sufficient bandwidth to perform closed-loop control.