Accurate position control of a flapping-wing robot enabling free-flight flow visualisation in a wind tunnel

Flow visualisations are essential to better understand the unsteady aerodynamics of flapping wing flight. The issues inherent to animal experiments, such as poor controllability and unnatural flapping when tethered, can be avoided by using robotic flyers that promise for a more systematic and repeatable methodology. Here, we present a new...

Design, control, and visual navigation of the DelftaCopter VTOL tail-sitter UAV

To participate in the Outback Medical Express UAV Challenge 2016, a vehicle was designed and tested that can autonomously hover precisely, takeoff and land vertically, fly fast forward efficiently, and use computer vision to locate a person and a suitable landing location. The vehicle is a novel hybrid tail‐sitter combining a delta‐shaped...