AUTONOMOUS MORPHING OF FLEXIBLE WING AND RUDDERLESS AIR VEHICLES WITH REFLEXIVE AND ADAPTIVE CONTROL CAPABILITIES- UNIFIED BIOLOGICAL AND ENGINEERING APPROACHES
Abstract
The operation of current aerial vehicles is limited by turbulent gusts. In contrast, birds fly robustly in the same atmospheric conditions despite their smaller size and lower speed. Birds morph their flexible bodies, wings, and tails to mitigates atmospheric perturbations like turbulent gusts. From our previous AFOSR bird-inspired research, we discovered two key principles- elastic compliance and directional fastening. We tested our pigeon-inspired robot, which embodies these principles, in our variable turbulence wind tunnel with underactuated control of the wings and tail. With whole body IMU feedback, it flew robustly up to 16 percent turbulence intensity, but failed at 22 percent. We propose to overcome this challenge by mimicking how kestrels wind-hover in strong turbulent gusts with fly-by-feel distributed aerodynamic sensing. We will document how kestrels mitigate turbulent gusts in our innovative dynamic gust and turbulence generator, using our turbulence generation and high-speed 3D morphing surface reconstruction systems in conjunction with our in-house AFOSR DURIP stereo fluoroscopes imaging musculoskeletal control. Then, we will fabricate the first fly-by-feel rudderless morphing flyer with distributed sensing to mitigate the turbulence intensity operation limit. The autonomous and flexible rudderless morphing air vehicle will accomplish this based on reflexive and adaptive control informed by distributed sensing. To reduce the computational burden, the morphing mechanism will be underactuated and we will harness sparse distributed sensing and sparse computation. The reflexive and adaptive neuromorphic control loop will be trained in the dynamic gust and turbulence generator so it is sufficiently robust to be thoroughly flight tested in the turbulent atmosphere.
Document Details
- Document Type
- DoD Grant Award
- Publication Date
- Jan 04, 2023
- Source ID
- FA86552217053
Entities
People
- David Lentink
Organizations
- Air Force Office of Scientific Research
- United States Air Force
- University of Groningen