Small Unmanned Aerial Vehicles have been receiving an increasingly interest in the last decades, fostered by the need of vehicles able to perform surveillance, communications relay links, ship decoys, and detection of biological, chemical, or nuclear materials. Smaller and handy vehicles Micro Air vehicles (MAVs) become even more challenging when DARPA launched in 1997 a pilot study into the design of portable (150 mm) flying vehicles to operate in D3—dull, dirty and dangerous—environments. More recently DARPA launched a Nano Air Vehicle (NAV) program with the objective of developing and demonstrating small (<100 mm; <10 g) lightweight air vehicles with the potential to perform indoor and outdoor missions. The current investigation is focused on the mechanisms involved with natural locomotion (propulsion and lift should not be considered independently). Biological systems with interesting applications to MAVs are generally inspired on flying insects or birds; however, similarly to the aerodynamics of flight, powered swimming requires animals to overcome drag by producing thrust. Commonalities between natural flying and swimming are analyzed together with flow control issues as a purpose of improvement on biology-inspired or biomimetic concepts for Micro Air Vehicles implementation.
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