[Submitted on 29 Oct 2026]
Title:FlapSim: A Composable MuJoCo Simulation Platform and Reduced-Order Aerodynamic Model Hierarchy for Flapping-Wing Robotics
View a PDF of the paper titled FlapSim: A Composable MuJoCo Simulation Platform and Reduced-Order Aerodynamic Model Hierarchy for Flapping-Wing Robotics, by Mingshan He
View PDF HTML (experimental)
Abstract:Flapping-wing simulation must reconcile high-frequency wingbeat aerodynamics with the slower dynamics relevant to flight control and reinforcement learning. We present FlapSim, a modular open-source MuJoCo simulation platform that combines robot descriptions, wing geometry, and composable aerodynamic models in a deterministic simulation pipeline. Across $48$ held-out scenarios spanning frequency, gimbal, wind, frequency-step, gust, and cross-robot flat-plate regimes, we compare five reduced-order configurations operating at $1\,\text{ms}$ with a $50\,\mu\text{s}$ quasi-steady blade-element reference. The built-in hover cycle-averaged baseline achieves a $67.51\times$ CPU speedup but only $0.6593$ mean wrench fidelity. Combining multirate $21$-substep clock synchronization, three-dimensional linear/quadratic inflow and gust coupling, analytical blade-element geometry scaling, and phase-locked $1f\text{--}6f$ harmonics raises mean fidelity to $0.9646$ at a $65.19\times$ speedup in a five-block model. A streamlined four-block model without explicit step-transient lag states achieves $0.9662$ fidelity at a $67.98\times$ speedup. Controlled ablations show that stroke harmonics are particularly important during frequency transitions, improving held-out frequency-step fidelity by $+0.3176$. Transfer-function analysis explains this effect: fixed-window cycle averaging retains harmonic contributions when the wingbeat frequency changes, so within-cycle reconstruction also improves the filtered wrench. Once phase alignment and harmonic synthesis are included, explicit transient lag states provide no additional benefit in this benchmark. These results characterize the accuracy--computation tradeoff of the aerodynamic hierarchy and identify timing, inflow, geometry, and harmonic representation as central considerations for reduced-order flapping-wing simulation.
Subjects:
Robotics (cs.RO)
ACM classes: I.6
Cite as: arXiv:2610.40902 [cs.RO]
(or arXiv:2610.40902v1 [cs.RO] for this version)
https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2610.40902
arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite (pending registration)
Submission history
From: Mingshan He [view email] [v1] Thu, 29 Oct 2026 19:25:20 UTC (2,364 KB)
Full-text links:
Access Paper:
View a PDF of the paper titled FlapSim: A Composable MuJoCo Simulation Platform and Reduced-Order Aerodynamic Model Hierarchy for Flapping-Wing Robotics, by Mingshan He
View PDF
HTML (experimental)
TeX Source
view license
Additional Features
Audio Summary
Current browse context:
cs.RO
new | recent | 2026-10
Change to browse by:
cs
References & Citations
SciX
Google Scholar
Semantic Scholar
Loading...
Data provided by:
Bibliographic Tools
Bibliographic and Citation Tools
Bibliographic Explorer Toggle
Bibliographic Explorer (What is the Explorer?)
Connected Papers Toggle
Connected Papers (What is Connected Papers?)
Litmaps Toggle
Litmaps (What is Litmaps?)
scite.ai Toggle
scite Smart Citations (What are Smart Citations?)
Code, Data, Media
Code, Data and Media Associated with this Article
alphaXiv Toggle
alphaXiv (What is alphaXiv?)
Links to Code Toggle
CatalyzeX Code Finder for Papers (What is CatalyzeX?)
DagsHub Toggle
DagsHub (What is DagsHub?)
GotitPub Toggle
Gotit.pub (What is GotitPub?)
Huggingface Toggle
Hugging Face (What is Huggingface?)
ScienceCast Toggle
ScienceCast (What is ScienceCast?)
Demos
Demos
Replicate Toggle
Replicate (What is Replicate?)
Spaces Toggle
Hugging Face Spaces (What is Spaces?)
Spaces Toggle
TXYZ.AI (What is TXYZ.AI?)
Related Papers
Recommenders and Search Tools
Link to Influence Flower
Influence Flower (What are Influence Flowers?)
Core recommender toggle
CORE Recommender (What is CORE?)
Author
Venue
Institution
Topic
About arXivLabs
arXivLabs: experimental projects with community collaborators
arXivLabs is a framework that allows collaborators to develop and share new arXiv features directly on our website.
Both individuals and organizations that work with arXivLabs have embraced and accepted our values of openness, community, excellence, and user data privacy. arXiv is committed to these values and only works with partners that adhere to them.
Have an idea for a project that will add value for arXiv's community? Learn more about arXivLabs.
Which authors of this paper are endorsers? | Disable MathJax (What is MathJax?)