Closed-Loop Control of a Constrained, Resonant-Flapping Micro Air Vehicle

Interest in flapping-wing micro air vehicles has grown in recent years. Considerable research has been invested in the areas of unsteady and low-Reynolds-number aerodynamics as well as techniques to fabricate small-scale prototypes. Control of these vehicles has been less studied, and most control techniques proposed have only been implemented within simulations. In this work, power efficiency versus flapping frequency is studied and shown to be maximized while flapping at the piezo-driven system’s resonance. Then, a resonant flapping control scheme, biharmonic amplitude and bias modulation, was used with prototype hardware to demonstrate closed-loop control of two different constrained configurations. This work is important in the development and understanding of eventual nonconstrained flight-capable flapping-wing micro air vehicles.