Flapping Wing Aircraft Control Technology

In recent years, a great deal of attention has been focused on Flapping Micro Air Vehicle (FMAV) with the rapid development of micro- and nanometer technology and MEMS. In the view of its unique advantages over the same style of fixed and rotatory MAV, many countries invest a lot of money to the fundamental research fields of FMAV, which make the developing strength of MAV being enhanced.This dissertation mainly explores the control technologies of FMAV. Flapping flight is analyzed from three different perspectives: bionic principle, locomotion modeling, control-theoretic and fabrication.From a biological perspective, the extraordinary maneuverability of many flying animals is the result of the two main factors: (1) their ability to generate and control the production of large aerodynamic forces and torques from unsteady state aerodynamic mechanisms unique to flapping flight, and (2) a hierarchical architecture for their sensory and neuromotor systems. Inspired by real birds and insects, this dissertation analyzes the controllability of a man-made FMAV and brings forward an engineering method to compute the aerodynamic forces produced by flapping wings. On this base, the equations of kinematics and dynamics are concluded from Newton's law, setting up the simple mathematic model of FMAV.According to the small perturbation of traditional control theory, the locomotion equations of FMAV can be divided into two groups: longitudinal and lateral. In addition, the characteristic of the two different locomotion are analyzed and the suitable control subsystem are designed, including damper, stabilizer, attribute control system and track control system. From a technological perspective, it is shown that a simple proportional feedback is sufficient to stabilize a wide range of flight modes such as hovering, cruising and steering. So in this dissertation this method is used to design controllers.Considering the nonlinearity of FMAV, it is also considerate to analyze the feasibility of applying modern control theory to the control system of FMAV. This is done by designing the locus tracking system and optimal control system oflongitudinal locomotion. Moreover, a hovering controller is also designed, validating the maneuverability of FMAV. Finally, an adaptive critical control system based on neural network is developed, validating the feasibility of applying neural network to solve the nonlinear problems of vehicles.The RC control and experiments of FMAV are another important part of this dissertation. Considering the characteristic of FMAV (such as low weight, low power assumption and so on), micro equipments of RC control system from foreign countries are introduced and three different methods to control active rudder are summarized. In addition, the lift measure system is briefly introduced. After analyzing the data from experiment, the variety rule of lift to each parameter is summed up.Finally, the whole works of this paper are summarized and future research prospects are discussed.