Hovering Control of Flapping Wings in Tandem with Multi-Rotors

TL;DR

This paper presents a control strategy for stabilizing a complex, morphing-wing, bat-inspired micro aerial vehicle in hover by using a guard with thrusters and an observer to estimate unmeasured states, enabling effective flight control.

Contribution

It introduces a novel control approach combining a guard with thrusters and an observer to stabilize a morphing-wing bat-inspired drone during hover.

Findings

Successful stabilization of Aerobat in hover

Effective state estimation with the observer

Enhanced flight control for morphing-wing UAVs

Abstract

This work briefly covers our efforts to stabilize the flight dynamics of Northeastern's tailless bat-inspired micro aerial vehicle, Aerobat. Flapping robots are not new. A plethora of examples is mainly dominated by insect-style design paradigms that are passively stable. However, Aerobat, in addition for being tailless, possesses morphing wings that add to the inherent complexity of flight control. The robot can dynamically adjust its wing platform configurations during gait cycles, increasing its efficiency and agility. We employ a guard design with manifold small thrusters to stabilize Aerobat's position and orientation in hovering, a flapping system in tandem with a multi-rotor. For flight control purposes, we take an approach based on assuming the guard cannot observe Aerobat's states. Then, we propose an observer to estimate the unknown states of the guard which are then used for closed-loop hovering control of the Guard-Aerobat platform.