Toward Flapping Wing Control of Micro Air Vehicles

Research into insect-sized flapping wing micro air vehicles has exploded over the last decade, yet most of this work has focused on simply achieving flight, while leaving the issue of how to control it to future researchers. Here, previous work in the field of flapping wing control is summarized and each proposed technique is evaluated according to how many body forces and moments it can directly influence on the micro air vehicle and how complicated a wing flapping mechanism is needed to implement it. Though some promising techniques have been proposed, none satisfactorily address all of the design criteria; therefore, a new technique is proposed, biharmonic amplitude and bias modulation. This technique is analyzed with quasi-steady blade-element techniques and shown to provide direct influence over five micro air vehicle body forces and moments in hover while requiring only two actuators. Furthermore, it is applicable to a wing flapping mechanism operating at its resonant frequency, which reduces the energetic cost of control for the micro air vehicle. [PUBLISHER ABSTRACT]