Insect-inspired flapping-wing aerial vehicles: a review of aerodynamics, design, and control

Insect-Inspired flapping-wing micro aerial vehicles (FWMAVs) have attracted significant attention due to their unique advantages in agility, manoeuvrability, low noise, and adaptability to cluttered environments. Over the past two decades, research in this field has progressed from early conceptual demonstrations to more advanced platforms capable of hovering, rapid manoeuvres and limited autonomous flight. This review summarizes the historical development of FWMAVs, highlights key unsteady aerodynamic mechanisms such as the leading-edge vortex, wake capture, clap-and-fling, rotational lift and added-mass effects, and analyses their roles in enabling lift enhancement under low Reynolds number conditions. Actuation approaches including motor-driven, piezoelectric, electromagnetic and emerging soft-material-based systems are examined, together with structural innovations in wing configurations such as two-wing, four-wing, X-wing, and multi-wing architectures. Control strategies for tailless vehicles, including wing-kinematics modulation, attitude feedback control and onboard sensing, are systematically reviewed. Despite significant progress, current FWMAVs still face major challenges in energy efficiency, endurance, lack of adaptability to different environments, environmental robustness and material limitations. Future development will require integration across disciplines such as smart materials, high-efficiency power systems, micro-fabrication and advanced control algorithms to achieve truly autonomous, robust, and long-range bio-inspired flight.