Computational morphology for a soft micro air vehicle in hovering flight

IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), Chicago, IL, SEP 14-18, 2014International audienceBio-inspired by moth or humming-birds, several micro air vehicles (MAV) have recently been developed. In these systems, the motion of the lifting surface is complex and modeled by flapping motion-controlled soft wings. The synchronization of the actuated periodic flapping motion of the wings and that of passive twisting degrees of freedom (dof) allows producing hovering flight. Depending on the feature of the MAV such as stiffness, and geometric characteristic, hovering flight can be naturally stable or not. In the first case hovering is obtained via an open loop control (or a local closed loop control) while in the second case a global control strategy is required to achieve the same objectives. Thus, it is crucial to take into account the influence of the design of the MAV on the control in order to choose an appropriate morphology that can reduce the burden of control. In this paper mathematical tools and methodologies are proposed to achieve this objective and reduce the computational cost of control