USC Raven: Compliant Flapping Wing Ornithopter
USC Raven is a flapping-wing UAV built around a super-compliant wing: rather than driving a rigid airfoil, each wing is independently actuated and allowed to deform passively under aerodynamic load, trading mechanical complexity for a lighter, more forgiving structure.
Initiated and led with a team of six at the Fluid-Structure Interactions Lab, USC (advisor: Prof. Mitul Luhar), the project covered the full arc from lightweight mechatronic design through fabrication to flight test. Along the way we built a fan-array wind tunnel — then an unusual facility for UAV-scale aerodynamic testing — to characterize the wing before taking it outdoors.
The aircraft achieved the first successful sustained outdoor flight of a compliant-wing ornithopter of its kind.