A Bio-inspired Sensing Approach to in-Gust Flight of Flapping Wing MAVs

Flapping wing micro aerial vehicles (FWMAVs) are known for their flight agility and maneuverability. However, their in-gust flight performance and stability is still inferior to their biological counterparts. To this end, a simplified in-gust dynamic model, which could capture the main gust effects on FWMAVs, has been identified with real in...

Thermistor-based airflow sensing on a flapping wing micro air vehicle

Flow sensing exists widely in nature to help animals perform certain tasks. It has also been widely adopted in engineering applications with different types of sensing instrumentation. In particular, in the field of aerospace engineering, airflow sensing is crucial to vehicle state evaluation and flight control. This project surveys the key...

Wing deformation measurements of the DelFly II in different flight conditions

This study investigates the wing deformation of the flapping-wing micro air vehicle (MAV) DelFly II in various flight configurations. Experiments were carried out with the MAV tethered in a windtunnel test section. To determine the best suited measurement approach, a trade-off study was carried out which showed that a point tracking approach...

Intelligent Flapping Wing Control: Reinforcement Learning for the DelFly

Flight control of the DelFly is challenging, because of its complex dynamics and variability due to manufacturing inconsistencies. Machine Learning algorithms can be used to tackle these challenges. A Policy Gradient algorithm is used to tune the gains of a Proportional-Integral controller using Reinforcement Learning. Furthermore, a novel...

Attitude control- and stabilisation moment generation of the DelFly using Wing Tension Modulation

System Identification with Multivariate Multiplex Splines

A new type of multivariate spline, based on tensor-product splines, is introduced and applied for function approximation purposes. An algorithm for system identification using these multiplex splines is developed and validated on DelFly II flight tests data.