• Dr. Jae-Hung Han
  • Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology
  • 216 Randolph Hall
  • 4:00 p.m.
  • Faculty Host: Dr. Michael Philen and Dr. Seongim Choi

Nature’s flyers have fascinated human beings; we have dreamt of “flying freely” in the sky just like a bird. It is not surprising that most of the early trials for “flying machines” adopted flapping mechanism for generating thrust and/or lift; typical examples of early design of flapping vehicles can be seen in the sketches of da Vinci and Cayley. After humanity’s long unquenched thirst of bird-like flight had first been realized by the “powered fixed-wing flight” of the Wright brothers, flapping flight seemed to have been forgotten due to the great success of fixed-wing aviation. However, we now see the rebirth of flapping flying machines in much smaller scale, namely flapping-wing micro aerial vehicles (FWMAV). Equipped with a small video camera and various sensors, they can be used for surveillance and reconnaissance missions with perfect camouflage due to their size and inherent nature-like appearance. However, there exist several key technological hurdles which have not reached the level of nature’s flyers. Particularly, flying insects and birds possess unsurpassable maneuverability and stability over any micro air vehicles (MAVs) developed by humankind. This superiority in their flight performance has stimulated many researchers to investigate the underlying mechanics of their flight, ultimately to utilize the knowledge for our own platforms to perform in the same way. This talk introduces our recent efforts to understand flapping-wing flight and to develop flapping air vehicles. Particularly, the flight dynamics characteristics of flapping-wing air vehicles will be introduced and compared with those of nature’s flyers. Finally, a new wind tunnel test method, named PFE (pseudo flight environment) will be introduced for efficient system identification, controller design and performance verification of MAV.

Biography:

Dr. Jae-Hung Han is a professor in the department of aerospace Engineering, KAIST (Korea Advanced Institute of Science Technology), Korea. He is the director of Smart Systems and Structures Lab. (http://sss.kaist.ac.kr) and KARPE (KAIST Arena Real-time Positioning Environment). He received a B.S. in the department of mechanical department, KAIST in 1991. He received his M.S. and Ph.D. in the department of aerospace engineering, KAIST in 1993 and 1998, respectively. Before joining KAIST as a faculty member in 2003, he worked at the Institute of Fluid Science, Tohoku Univ., Japan and at the communication satellite development center of ETRI (Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute), Korea. His research and teaching activities have focused on the development of new technologies and systems that utilize the smart materials and structures, and information technology (electronics) with the emphases on elegant design and reliable control. Recent research topics include Shape Reconstruction of Structures Using FBG Sensors; Dimensional Stability of Space Structures; Micro Vibration Suppression for Jitter mitigation; Bio-inspired Flying Robot, and so on. He is a senior member of AIAA, a member of ASME and SPIE. He has published about 90 international journal papers, and has received several awards including the best paper award in 2010 World Automation Congress (Sep., Kobe, Japan) and KAIST Creative Teaching award in 2007. He is an associate editor or a member of editorial board for 5 int. journals including Aerospace Science and Technology, Smart and Nano Materials, Advanced Composite Materials. He is currently in his sabbatical leave at Univ. Maryland.