Flapping-Wing Robot Stability Enhanced with New Disturbance Control
Researchers have developed an advanced control system for flapping-wing micro aerial vehicles that significantly improves their stability and ability to reject external disturbances like wind gusts.
Flapping-wing micro aerial vehicles (FW-MAVs), inspired by insects and birds, offer unique flight capabilities such as hovering and independent wing control, making them suitable for confined spaces and future inspection, monitoring, and search-and-rescue operations. However, their rapid wing movements make them vulnerable to external disturbances like wind.
Chiba University researchers, led by Assistant Professor Abner Asignacion and Dr. Satoshi Suzuki, investigated the flight dynamics of a commercial FW-MAV to understand its disturbance rejection limitations. They developed a disturbance observer, a control system designed to detect and compensate for external forces, specifically accounting for the limitations inherent in these robots.
The developed control method allows FW-MAVs to maintain more stable flight even when subjected to disturbances. The team tested their approach on a 103-gram Flapping Nimble+ robot, instructing it to move horizontally while hovering. They observed the robot's response to movement commands ranging from slow to moderately fast.
During testing, researchers identified that the robot exhibited strong non-minimum-phase behavior along the X-axis, which affected the speed of its disturbance correction. By adjusting the disturbance observer's response rate, they found an intermediate setting that balanced effective disturbance rejection with stable flight, avoiding oscillations caused by overly rapid corrections.
When implemented, this tuned disturbance observer reduced the robot's X-axis position error by 53.1% and its overall 3D position error by approximately 28%, demonstrating a significant improvement in stability and control under challenging conditions. Future applications are envisioned in areas difficult for humans to access, such as infrastructure inspection, disaster response, and environmental monitoring.
This development addresses a critical challenge in micro aerial vehicle control: maintaining stability amidst external forces. By incorporating a disturbance observer tuned for non-minimum-phase dynamics, researchers are enhancing the practical utility of FW-MAVs for complex tasks. This advancement contributes to the broader trend of creating more robust and autonomous aerial robots capable of operating in unpredictable environments, potentially expanding their use in fields like inspection and search-and-rescue.
Edited by the news editor with AI from the original report — please refer to the original source.