This paper reports on a thin piezoresistive cantilever for measuring air flow velocity around flapping wings. To measure the air flow velocity at a point of the wing directly, our sensor was attached to the leading edge of the wing. The sensor was designed to be 0.3 μm thick. Because of the scale effect, the influence of the inertial force was small during flow measurement. The sensor had the sensitivity of 4.0 × 10^-3 (m/s)^-2 as well as the directivity. By using the micro flow sensor, we measured the perpendicular air flow velocity at the point of the leading edge of the wing.

References :
Hidetosh Takahashi, Eiji Iwase, Kiyoshi Matsumoto, Isao Shimoyama, “Air Flow Sensor for an Insect-Like Flapping Wing,” The 21st IEEE International Conference on Micro Electro Mechanical Systems (MEMS '08), pp. 116-119, Tucson, Arizona, USA, January 13-17, 2008. [Proceedings]