Rigid-body kinematics versus flapping kinematics of a flapping wing micro air vehicle

Several formulations have been proposed to model the dynamics of ornithopters, with inconclusive results regarding the need for complex kinematic formulations. Furthermore, the impact of assumptions made in the collected results was never assessed by comparing simulations with real flight data. In this study two dynamic models of a Flapping Wing...

Morphologic and Aerodynamic Considerations Regarding the Plumed Seeds of Tragopogon pratensis and Their Implications for Seed Dispersal

Tragopogon pratensis is a small herbaceous plant that uses wind as the dispersal vector for its seeds. The seeds are attached to parachutes that increase the aerodynamic drag force and increase the total distance travelled. Our hypothesis is that evolution has carefully tuned the air permeability of the seeds to operate in the most convenient...

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...

Modelling of a Hybrid UAV Using Test Flight Data

The concept of an aircraft capable of both hover as well as fast forward flight (hybrid) has recently been implemented on unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV). Hybrid UAVs combine hover capability with long range and endurance. As UAVs are often required to operate without human intervention, there is a call for autonomous guidance of hybrid UAVs....

An Ecological Approach to the Supervisory Control of UAV Swarms

This research employs ecological interface design to improve the human machine interface of an existing ground control station for the supervisory control of UAV swarms. As a case study, a general ground surveillance mission with four UAVs is envisioned. An analysis of the swarming work domain is performed to generate a reduced set of means-end...

Modelling of a Hybrid UAV Using Test Flight Data

The concept of an aircraft capable of both hover as well as fast forward flight (hybrid) has recently been implemented on unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV). Hybrid UAVs combine hover capability with long range and endurance. As UAVs are often required to operate without human intervention, there is a call for autonomous guidance of hybrid UAVs....

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...

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...

An Ecological Approach to the Supervisory Control of UAV Swarms

This research employs ecological interface design to improve the human machine interface of an existing ground control station for the supervisory control of UAV swarms. As a case study, a general ground surveillance mission with four UAVs is envisioned. An analysis of the swarming work domain is performed to generate a reduced set of means-end...

Optic-flow based slope estimation for autonomous landing

Micro Air Vehicles need to have a robust landing capability, especially when they operate outside line-of-sight. Autonomous landing requires the identification of a relatively flat landing surface that does not have too large an inclination. In this article, a vision algorithm is introduced that fits a second-order approximation to the optic...

Paparazzi: How to make a swarm of Parrot AR Drones fly autonomously based on GPS

Near-Hover Flapping Wing MAV Aerodynamic Modelling: A linear model approach

BioMAV: Bio-inspired intelligence for autonomous ?ight

This paper aims to contribute to research on biologically inspired micro air vehicles in two ways: (i) it explores a novel repertoire of behavioral modules which can be controlled through ?nite state machines (FSM) and (ii) elementary movement detectors (EMD) are combined with a center/surround edge detection algorithm to yield improved edge...

BioMAV: Bio-inspired intelligence for autonomous flight

This paper aims to contribute to research on biologically inspired micro air vehicles in two ways: (i) it explores a novel repertoire of behavioral modules which can be controlled through ?nite state machines (FSM) and (ii) elementary movement detectors (EMD) are combined with a center/surround edge detection algorithm to yield improved edge...

Adaptive gaze control for object detection

We propose a novel gaze-control model for detecting objects in images. The model, named act-detect, uses the information from local image samples in order to shift its gaze towards object locations. The model constitutes two main contributions. The first contribution is that the model’s setup makes it computationally highly efficient in...

Local sampling for indoor flight

A challenging problem in artificial intelligence is to achieve vision-based autonomous indoor flight with Micro Air Vehicles. Approaches to this problem currently do not make use of image appearance features, because these features generally are computationally expensive. In this article, we deliver a proof-ofconcept that appearance features can...