Physical and aerodynamic characteristics of the bird in flight may offer benefits over typical propeller or rotor driven miniature air vehicle (MAV) locomotion designs in certain types of scenarios. A number of research groups and companies have developed flapping wing vehicles that attempt to harness these benefits. The purpose of this paper is to report different types of flapping wing designs and compare their salient characteristics. For each category, advantages and disadvantages will be discussed. The discussion presented will be limited to miniature-sized flapping wing air vehicles, defined as 10–100 grams total weight. The discussion will be focused primarily on ornithopters which have performed at least one successful test flight. Additionally, this paper is intended to provide a representation of the field of current technology, rather than providing a comprehensive listing of all possible designs. This paper will familiarize a newcomer to the field with existing designs and their distinguishing features. By studying existing designs, future designers will be able to adopt features from other successful designs. This paper also summarizes the design challenges associated with the further advancement of the field and deploying flapping wing vehicles in practice.
Physical and aerodynamic characteristics of a bird in flight offer benefits over typical propeller or rotor driven miniature air vehicle (MAV) locomotion designs in certain applications. A number of research groups and companies have developed flapping wing vehicles that attempt to harness these benefits. The purpose of this paper is to report different types of flapping wing miniature air vehicle designs and compare their salient characteristics. This paper is focused on mechanical design aspects of mechanisms and wings. The discussion presented will be limited to miniature-sized flapping wing air vehicles, defined as 10 to 100 g total weight. The discussion will be focused primarily on designs which have performed at least one successful test flight. This paper provides representative designs in each category, rather than providing a comprehensive listing of all existing designs. This paper will familiarize a newcomer to the field with existing designs and their distinguishing features. By studying existing designs, future designers will be able to adopt features from other successful designs. This paper also summarizes the design challenges associated with the further advancement of the field and deploying flapping wing vehicles in practice.
Unmanned aerial systems (UAS) are becoming increasingly popular in industry, military, and social environments. An UAS that provides good operating performance and robustness to disturbances is often quite expensive and prohibitive to the general public. To improve UAS performance without affecting the overall cost, an estimation strategy can be implemented on the internal controller. The use of an estimation strategy or filter reduces the number of required sensors and power requirement, and improves the controller performance. UAS devices are highly nonlinear, and implementation of filters can be quite challenging. This paper presents the implementation of the relatively new cubature smooth variable structure filter (CSVSF) on a quadrotor controller. The results are compared with other state and parameter estimation strategies.
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