Design of Non-Conventional Flight Control Systems for Bioinspired Micro Air Vehicles

Abstract

This research focuses on the development of two bioinspired micro air vehicle (MAV) prototypes, based on morphing wings and wing grid wingtip devices. The morphing wings MAV tries to adapt the aerodynamics of the vehicle to each phase of flight by modifying the vehicle geometry, while the wing grid MAV aims to minimize the aerodynamic and weight penalty of these vehicles. This work focuses on the design methodology of the flight control system of these MAVs. A preliminary theoretical conceptual design was used to verify the requirements, wind tunnel tests were performed to determine aerodynamic characteristics, and suitable materials were selected. The hardware and software configuration designed for the control system, which fulfills the objective of adaptive and optimal control in the wingtip-based prototype of the wing grid, is described. Finally, the results of the flight control on the prototype MAVs are analyzed.

Keywords

• MAV
• bioinspiration
• <i>wing grid</i>
• adaptive control
• actuator
• flight control systems