Adaptive morphing of wing and tail for stable, resilient, and energy-efficient flight of avian-informed drones

Fuente: arXiv
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Auteurs principaux: Jeger, Simon L., Wüest, Valentin, Toumieh, Charbel, Floreano, Dario
Format: Preprint
Publié: 2024
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author Jeger, Simon L.
Wüest, Valentin
Toumieh, Charbel
Floreano, Dario
author_facet Jeger, Simon L.
Wüest, Valentin
Toumieh, Charbel
Floreano, Dario
contents Avian-informed drones feature morphing wing and tail surfaces, enhancing agility and adaptability in flight. Despite their large potential, realising their full capabilities remains challenging due to the lack of generalized control strategies accommodating their large degrees of freedom and cross-coupling effects between their control surfaces. Here we propose a new body-rate controller for avian-informed drones that uses all available actuators to control the motion of the drone. The method exhibits robustness against physical perturbations, turbulent airflow, and even loss of certain actuators mid-flight. Furthermore, wing and tail morphing is leveraged to enhance energy efficiency at 8m/s, 10m/s and 12m/s using in-flight Bayesian optimization. The resulting morphing configurations yield significant gains across all three speeds of up to 11.5% compared to non-morphing configurations and display a strong resemblance to avian flight at different speeds. This research lays the groundwork for the development of autonomous avian-informed drones that operate under diverse wind conditions, emphasizing the role of morphing in improving energy efficiency.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2403_08598
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Adaptive morphing of wing and tail for stable, resilient, and energy-efficient flight of avian-informed drones
Jeger, Simon L.
Wüest, Valentin
Toumieh, Charbel
Floreano, Dario
Robotics
Avian-informed drones feature morphing wing and tail surfaces, enhancing agility and adaptability in flight. Despite their large potential, realising their full capabilities remains challenging due to the lack of generalized control strategies accommodating their large degrees of freedom and cross-coupling effects between their control surfaces. Here we propose a new body-rate controller for avian-informed drones that uses all available actuators to control the motion of the drone. The method exhibits robustness against physical perturbations, turbulent airflow, and even loss of certain actuators mid-flight. Furthermore, wing and tail morphing is leveraged to enhance energy efficiency at 8m/s, 10m/s and 12m/s using in-flight Bayesian optimization. The resulting morphing configurations yield significant gains across all three speeds of up to 11.5% compared to non-morphing configurations and display a strong resemblance to avian flight at different speeds. This research lays the groundwork for the development of autonomous avian-informed drones that operate under diverse wind conditions, emphasizing the role of morphing in improving energy efficiency.
title Adaptive morphing of wing and tail for stable, resilient, and energy-efficient flight of avian-informed drones
topic Robotics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2403.08598