Numerical investigation of disc-wing MAV with propeller in a wing slot

Concept of dis?-wing MAV with propeller in a wing slot has a number of advantages and disadvantages. The concept is used by MIPTEAM for solving the problem of fixed wing MAV indoor flight by means of lift maximization for wing with low aspect ratio. There are only few investigations of dis?-wing MAV aerodynamics with propeller in a wing slot....

Dynamic Behaviors of a Vortex Ring on a Butterfly and a Small Flapping Robot

Butterflies fly combining wing flapping and gliding efficiently and have beautiful flight patterns. Micro-Air-Vehicles (MAVs) and micro-flight robots that mimic the flight mechanisms of insects have been attracting significant attention in recent years. A number of MAVs and micro-flight robots that use various devices have been reported. However...

Determination of trim curves for a flapping-wing MAV

This paper presents the results of a series of flight tests conducted in order to assess the steady-state flight characteristics and basic control behaviour of the DelFly, a flapping-wing micro aerial vehicle (FWMAV). Flights were conducted in an indoor motion tracking facility and included steady-level flight at a range of different velocities...

Lisa-S 2.8g autopilot for GPS-based flight of MAVs

Recent advances in sensor miniaturization have enabled the development of a miniaturized fully functional autopilot. In this article, the open hardware and open software Paparazzi-UAV Lisa-S micro autopilot is presented, weighing only 2.8 grams and measuring 2 by 2 centimeters. It incorporates 2-way telemetry with a ground station, a Spektrum...

PLASE: A Novel Planar Surface Extraction Method for the Autonomous Navigation of Micro-Air Vehicle

A planar surface extraction method is proposed for the indoor navigation of a micro-air vehicle (MAV). The algorithm finds planar clusters from the unorganized pointclouds. This is achieved by implementing a novel approach that first segments the data points into clusters and then each cluster is estimated for its planarity. The method is tested...

Autonomous Aerial Mapping and Observation Task for IMAV2014 Competition

The IMAV2014 Competition gives an important place to computer vision and aerial mapping. This paper presents the different strategies and algorithms that have been developed in order to tackle these particular problems. The first task consists in automatically reading the digit displayed by a seven segment panel on the front wall of a building....

Aerodynamics Study of Fixed-Wing MAV: Wind Tunnel and Flight Test

Obtaining accurate aerodynamic characteristics of in-flight Micro Air Vehicles (MAVs) was viewed as difficult, due to the nature of very low Reynolds number, 3D complex flow, and strong influence from propulsion slipstream. This paper presents the study of the tailless, fixed-wing MAV, KuMAV-001, performed at Kasetsart University. The team...

Closing the gap between simulation and reality in the sensor and motion models of an autonomous AR.Drone

This article describes a method to develop an advanced navigation capability for the standard platform of the IMAV indoor competition: the Parrot AR.Drone. Our development is partlybased on simulation, which requires both a re-alistic sensor and motion model. This article de-scribes how a visual map of the indoor environ-ment can be made,...

Development and Application of PP-CNT Composite for Hummingbird Inspired MAV Flapping Wings

Micro Air Vehicles (MAVs) are small unmanned aircrafts which have a maximum size limit of 150 mm in any direction. They can be used for surveillance, reconnaissance, targeting, etc. To perform such missions, MAVs are required to hover. Hummingbirds, having excellent flight characteristics (such as hovering, ability to fly in any direction,...

Inverse Dynamics Approach to Adaptive Damage-Tolerant Control for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

A control problem is discussed for unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) as applies to its short-period longitudinal motion. The problem is formulated taking into account various uncertainty factors such as imperfect knowledge about UAV parameters and characteristics as well as environment exposure. One more class of the uncertainty factors includes...

Application of Electro-Active Materials to a Coaxial-Rotor NAV

A new Nano Air Vehicle (NAV) configuration based on a coaxial nano rotor has been studied by ISAE. The coaxial rotor provides the thrust necessary for hovering and low speed translation flight. The major design challenge for rotary-wing NAVs is related to the difficulty of miniaturizing complex mechanisms such as a rotor cyclic pitch swashplate...

Equilibrium Transition Study for a Hybrid MAV

Wind tunnel testing was performed on a VTOL aircraft in order to characterize longitudinal flight behavior during a transition between vertical and horizontal flight modes. Trim values for airspeed, pitch, motor speed and elevator position were determined. Data was collected by independently varying the trim parameters, and stability and control...

Analysis of tail effects in flapping flight

Numerical simulations have been performed to examine the interference effects between an upstream flapping airfoil and a downstream stationary airfoil in a tandem configuration at a Reynolds number of 1000, which is around the regime of small flapping micro aerial vehicles. The objective is to investigate the effect of the distance of the tail...

Trajectory-aware Ad hoc Routing Protocol for Micro Aerial Vehicle Networks

Micro Aerial Vehicles (MAVs) are small unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) that are generally equipped with camera, GPS and other sensors and are envisioned for many civil and commercial applications. Some of these applications require transmitting multimedia traffic and demand for a high wireless network throughput. In this paper, we consider an...

Development of the flight model of a tilt-body MAV

This article presents the results of a wind tunnel campaign for a tilt-body UAV, the MAVion. The objective of this campaign is to develop a simplified flight model for use in control systems design and implementation. In order to achieve precise flight control during transition, stationary and cruise modes, the aerodynamic coefficients are...

Vortex Formation and Force Generation Mechanisms of the DelFly II in Hovering Flight

This paper addresses the unsteady aerodynamic mechanisms in the hovering flight of the DelFly II flapping-wing Micro Aerial Vehicle (MAV). Stereoscopic Particle Image Velocimetry (Stereo-PIV) were carried out around the wings at a high framing rate. Thrust-force was measured to investigate the relation between the vortex dynamics and the...

Deformation Analysis of a Hummingbird Inspired MAV Flapping Wing using Digital Image Correlation

Flapping wing micro air vehicles (MAVs) have the advantage of being able to fly at slow speeds and have high maneuverability. The design of a flapping wing MAV inspired by birds presents many technical challenges because birds as natural fliers exhibit higher efficiency than any man made flapping wing structure. Thus, the structure and motion of...