Fixed Wing Micro Aerial Vehicle Pitching Control Based On Flow Field Patterns

In recent years, there has been much interest in biology to develop new sensing and control technologies for use in flight control systems. One bioinspired concept of particular interest is the microscale distributed flow sensor array, which is an analogue to mechanosensor arrays distributed over wing surfaces of many animals including birds and bats and are implicated in stable and controlled flights even during unsteady wind conditions. In this work, a fixed-wing micro aerial vehicle is simulated in AVL®, and the surface pressure pattern is constructed using the information sampled by an array of onboard micro-scale pressure sensors. The relationships between the pressure field pattern, free-stream airspeed, angle of attack, and side slip angle are analyzed. A nonlinear robust controller is designed that regulates the difference between the desired and actual pressure field patterns, and its asymptotic stability is proven. It is shown in simulation that both disturbance rejection and command tracking capabilities are achieved using this method for pitching motion controls