School of Mechanical Engineering, Purdue University.
Amazon.com, Inc.
Bioinspir Biomim. 2023 Jan 13;18(2). doi: 10.1088/1748-3190/acaa7b.
Flight control such as stable hovering and trajectory tracking of tailless flapping-wing micro aerial vehicles is a challenging task. Given the constraint on actuation capability, flight control authority is limited beyond sufficient lift generation. In addition, the highly nonlinear and inherently unstable vehicle dynamics, unsteady aerodynamics, wing motion caused body oscillations, and mechanism asymmetries and imperfections due to fabrication process, all pose challenges to flight control. In this work, we propose a systematic onboard control method to address such challenges. In particular, with a systematic comparative study, a nonlinear flight controller incorporating parameter adaptation and robust control demonstrates the preferred performances. Such a controller is designed to address time-varying system uncertainty in flapping flight. The proposed controller is validated on a 12-g at-scale tailless hummingbird robot equipped with two actuators. Maneuver experiments have been successfully performed by the proposed hummingbird robot, including stable hovering, waypoint and trajectory tracking, and stabilization under severe wing asymmetries.
无尾扑翼微型飞行器的飞行控制，如稳定悬停和轨迹跟踪，是一项具有挑战性的任务。由于受驱动能力的限制，飞行控制权限在产生足够升力后受到限制。此外，飞行器动力学的高度非线性和固有不稳定性、非定常空气动力学、机翼运动引起的机身振动、以及制造过程中的机构不对称和不完善，都对飞行控制提出了挑战。在这项工作中，我们提出了一种系统的机载控制方法来应对这些挑战。特别是，通过系统的比较研究，采用参数自适应和鲁棒控制的非线性飞行控制器表现出了更好的性能。这种控制器是为了解决扑翼飞行中时变系统不确定性而设计的。所提出的控制器在配备两个执行器的 12 克比例无尾蜂鸟机器人上进行了验证。所提出的蜂鸟机器人成功地进行了机动实验，包括稳定悬停、航点和轨迹跟踪，以及在严重的机翼不对称下的稳定。
