Micro Air Vehicle’s Attitude Control Using Real-Time Pressure and Shear Information

It has been observed and experimentally validated that birds and bats can obtain airflow information with mechanoreceptors on their wing and body surfaces to achieve ultrastable, highly maneuverable, and energy efficient flights. Inspired by this observation, an attitude control method using the real-time flow (pressure and shear) information is studied. Previous research has demonstrated the effectiveness of using pressure information only for a micro air vehicle’s pitching control in both simulation and wind tunnel tests. In this paper, the new concept is extended to three-axis attitude controls. A new three-axis attitude motion model is developed, relating the pressure and shear information to attitude states. A nonlinear controller, which is robust with respect to bounded uncertainties, is implemented to track the attitude commands. A delta wing configuration with 20 sensor couples on the wing surface and one sensor couple on the rudder surface is proposed, designed, and tested in a simulated environment. The simulation results show that the pressure and shear information based attitude control approach can help micro air vehicles achieve accurate and robust attitude tracking control in both steady and unsteady wind conditions with a small amplitude lateral damping.