This paper shows a series of tools that help in the research of morphing micro air vehicles (MAVs). These tools are aimed at generating parametric CAD models of wings in a few seconds that can be used in aerodynamic studies, either via CFD directly u...
This paper discusses the development, flight-testing, and flight dynamics modeling of a Micro Air Vehicle (MAV) that could be deployed in a folded configuration via hand launching. This 112 g MAV features foldable propeller arms that can lock into a...
Flow visualizations have been performed on a free flying, flapping-wing micro air vehicle (MAV), using a large-scale particle image velocimetry (PIV) approach. The PIV method involves the use of helium-filled soap bubbles (HFSB) as tracer particles....
In this work, micro air vehicles (MAVs) equipped with bio-inspired wings are investigated experimentally in wind tunnel. The starting point is that insects such as dragonflies, butterflies and locusts have wings with rigid tubular elements (corrugati...
Micro air vehicles (MAVs) operating at low Reynolds numbers face aerodynamic and structural challenges that differ significantly from those encountered by conventional aircrafts. Nature provides effective solutions to these constraints, as insects, b...
A micro air vehicle (MAV) is physically lightweight, such that even a slight perturbation could affect its attitude and position tracking. To attain better autonomous flight system performance, MAVs require good control strategies to maintain their a...
Autonomous flight of Flapping Wing Micro Air Vehicles (FWMAVs) is a major challenge in the field of robotics, due to their light weight and their flapping-induced body motions. An FWMAV is presented weighing a mere 20 g while all its sensors and proc...
Due to the rapid development of science and technology in recent times, many effective controllers are designed and applied successfully to complicated systems. The significant task of controller design is to determine optimized control gains in a sh...
For use in autonomous micro air vehicles, visual sensors must not only be small, lightweight and insensitive to light variations; on-board autopilots also require fast and accurate optical flow measurements over a wide range of speeds. Using an auto-...
In this paper, an ornithopter prototype that mimics the flapping motion of bird flight is developed, and the lift and thrust generation characteristics of different wing designs are evaluated. This project focused on the spar arrangement and material...
An Unmanned Aerial System (UAS) has been developed which is based on an aerodynamically functionalized planar wideband antenna. The antenna utilizes a planar circular dipole metallization scheme. The aerodynamic structure implements a planform simila...
In this paper the development and practical implementation of a Passivity-Based Control (PBC) algorithm to stabilize an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) described with unit quaternions are presented. First, a mathematical model based on Euler-Lagrange f...
In most beetles, the hind wings are thin and fragile; when at rest, they are held over the back of the beetle. When the hind wing unfolds, it provides the necessary aerodynamic forces for flight. In this paper, we investigate the hydraulic mechanism...
To propel a lightweight structure, a hybrid wing structure was designed; the wing’s geometry resembled a rotor blade, and its flexibility resembled an insect’s flapping wing. The wing was designed to be flexible in twist and spanwise rigid, thus main...
The flight performance and maneuverability of Odonata depends on wing shape and aero-structural characteristics, including airfoil shape, wingspan, and chord. Despite the superficial similarity between Odonata planforms, the frequency with which they...
This research focuses on the development of two bioinspired micro air vehicle (MAV) prototypes, based on morphing wings and wing grid wingtip devices. The morphing wings MAV tries to adapt the aerodynamics of the vehicle to each phase of flight by mo...
A micro air vehicle (MAV) is a class of miniature unmanned aerial vehicles that has a size restriction and may be autonomous. Fixed-wing MAVs are very attractive for outdoor surveillance missions since they generally offer better payload and enduranc...
Recently, Micro Air Vehicles (MAVs) have been receiving a significant amount of attention from research organizations and businesses worldwide due to their unique characteristics, including high mobility, three-dimensional (3D) movement, and ease of...
Micro Air Vehicles (MAVs) driven by electric propellers are of interest for military and civilian applications. The rotational speed control of such electric propellers is an important factor for improving the flight performance of the vehicles, such...
The proposed work aims at exploring and developing new strategies to extend mission parameters (measured as travel distance and mission duration (MD)) of a new class of unmanned vehicles, named Micro Air Vehicles (MAVs). In this paper, a new analytic...
The present work is focused on the investigation of the aerodynamic performances of a novedous bioinspired morphing Micro Air Vehicle (MAV) with an adaptive wing structure geometry. For this purpose, a numerical study of Computational Fluid Dynamics...
Flapping-wing Micro Air Vehicles (FW-MAVs), inspired by small insects, have limitless potential to be capable of performing tasks in urban and indoor environments. Through the process of mimicking insect flight, however, there are a lot of challenges...
Micro Air Vehicles (MAVs) equipped with various sensors are able to carry out autonomous flights. However, the self-localization of autonomous agents is mostly dependent on Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS). In order to provide an accurate n...
The lightweight nature of micro air vehicles (MAVs) makes them highly sensitive to perturbations, thus emphasizing the need for effective control strategies that can sustain attitude stability throughout translational movement. This study evaluates t...
Despite decades of development, micro air vehicles (MAVs) still face challenges related to endurance. While solar power has been successfully implemented in larger aircraft as a clean and renewable source of energy, its adaptation to MAVs presents un...
The coaxial Tri-rotor micro air vehicle (MAV) is composed of three coaxial rotors where the aerodynamic characteristics of is complicated in flight especially when the wind effect is introduced. In this paper, the hovering performance of a full-scale...
Due to its payload, size and computational limits, localizing a micro air vehicle (MAV) using only its onboard sensors in an indoor environment is a challenging problem in practice. This paper introduces an indoor localization approach that relies on...
Estimating the relative position and velocity of micro aerial vehicles (MAVs) using visual signals is a critical issue in numerous tasks. However, traditional relative motion estimation algorithms suffer severely from non-Gaussian noise interference...
Bird tails play a significant role in aerodynamics and stability during flight. This paper investigates the use of bioinspired horizontal stabilizers for Micro Air Vehicles (MAVs) with Zimmerman wing-body geometry. Five configurations of bioinspired...
Small highly mobile robots, and in particular micro air vehicles (MAVs), are well suited to the task of exploring unknown indoor environments such as buildings and caves. Such a task imposes a number of requirements on the underlying communication in...
This paper presents a thorough review on the system identification techniques applied to flapping wing micro air vehicles (FWMAVs). The main advantage of this work is to provide a solid background and domain knowledge of system identification for fur...
The rapid growth of drone use in urban areas has prompted authorities to review airspace regulations, forcing drone manufacturers to anticipate and reduce the noise emissions during the design stage. Additionally, micro air vehicles (MAVs) are design...
This paper presents the real-time implementation of an altitude-embedded flight controller using proportional, integral, and derivative (PID) control, adaptive PID (APID) control, and adaptive PID control with a fuzzy compensator (APIDFC) for a micro...
Flow separation is a fundamental phenomenon in fluid mechanics governed by the Navier–Stokes equations, which are second-order partial differential equations (PDEs). This phenomenon significantly impacts aerodynamic performance in various appli...
A numerical investigation on propeller-induced flow effects in tractor configurations on a Zimmerman wing-fuselage using the cambered thin airfoil is presented in this paper. The Reynolds number based on the mean aerodynamic chord was 1.3 × 105...
Wind disturbance posed difficulties for the stability of the micro air vehicles (MAVs) with attitude variation. In this paper, the aerodynamic performance of a MAV with six coaxial rotor pairs considering the horizontal wind is investigated by both e...
Micro Air Vehicles (MAVs) airfoils usually operate at low Reynolds number conditions, where viscous drag will consume a large amount of propulsion power. Due to the small dimensions, many drag reduction methods have failed, resulting in limited curre...
Bird tails play a key role in aerodynamics and flight stability. They produce extra lift for takeoff and landing maneuvers, enhance wing functions and maintain stability during flight (keeping the bird from yawing, rolling and pitching, or otherwise...
In the present two-dimensional numerical study, we investigate the roles of geometrical parameters of a hydrofoil (shape/curvature of the leading and trailing edges and thickness) and kinematic parameters (phase difference between heave and pitch (
This work presents a first-iteration bio-faithful dragonfly-inspired wing designed for future flapping micro air vehicle (MAV) applications. Using high-resolution imaging, the natural venation pattern of fore- and hindwings was reconstructed in CAD a...
This paper presents a study based on wind tunnel research on biplane configurations. The objective of this research is to establish an experimental basis for relationships between the main geometrical parameters that define a biplane configuration (s...
This paper proposes a wing root control mechanism inspired by the drag-based system of a dragonfly. The previous mechanisms for generating wing rotations have high controllability of the angle of attack, but the structures are either too complex or t...
Low Reynolds number flows are central to the performance of airfoils used in small unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), micro air vehicles (MAVs), and aerodynamic platforms operating in rarefied atmospheres. Consequently, a deep understanding of airfoil...
Flapping-wing micro air vehicles (FWMAVs) have gained increasing attention due to their manoeuvrability, low acoustic signature, and suitability for confined or cluttered environments. Despite considerable progress, existing reviews treat actuation m...
Many previous studies have shown that wing corrugation of an insect wing is only structurally beneficial in enhancing the wing’s bending stiffness and does not much help to improve the aerodynamic performance of flapping wings. This study uses...
This paper describes a dragonfly-inspired Flapping Wing Micro Air Vehicle (FW-MAV), named HiFly-Dragon. Dragonflies exhibit exceptional flight performance in nature, surpassing most of the other insects, and benefit from their abilities to independen...
In recent years, the demand for Urban Air Mobility (UAM) and Micro Aerial Vehicles (MAVs) has driven the emergence of new aircraft designs, with the Staggered Rotor System being widely applied in these vertical take-off and landing aircraft. Due to t...
This paper opens with an historical overview of efforts to develop micro-, mini-, and organic aerial vehicles (MAVs and OAVs) in the 1990’s. Although conceived during WWII, coleopters would not see serial production for 60 years. The paper cont...
This paper presents a vision-based indoor scene recognition method from aerial time-series images obtained using a micro air vehicle (MAV). The proposed method comprises two procedures: a codebook feature description procedure, and a recognition proc...
In order to obtain accurate and optimized navigation sensor information, it is necessary to study information fusion and fault diagnosis with high reliability, high precision and high autonomy, and then to propose a rapid and accurate intelligent dec...
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