Abstract Some bird species exhibit a flight behavior known as whiffling, in which the bird flies upside-down during landing, predator evasion, or courtship displays. Flying inverted causes the flight feathers to twist, creating gaps in the wing’s trailing edge. It has been suggested that these gaps decrease lift at a potentially lower energy cost, enabling the bird to maneuver and rapidly descend. Thus, avian whiffling has parallels to an uncrewed aerial vehicle (UAV) using spoilers for rapid descent and ailerons for roll control. However, while whiffling has been previously described in the biological literature, it has yet to directly inspire aerodynamic design. In the current research, we investigated if gaps in a wing’s trailing edge, similar to those caused by feather rotation during whiffling, could provide an effective mechanism for UAV control, particularly rapid descent and banking. To address this question, we performed a wind tunnel test of 3D printed wings with a varying amount of trailing edge gaps and compared the lift and rolling moment coefficients generated by the gapped wings to a traditional spoiler and aileron. Next, we used an analytical analysis to estimate the force and work required to actuate gaps, spoiler, and aileron. Our results showedmore »
uavEE: A Modular, Power-Aware Emulation Environment for Rapid Prototyping and Testing of UAV
State of the art design and testing of avionics for
unmanned aircraft is an iterative process that involves many
test flights, interleaved with multiple revisions of the flight management
software and hardware. To significantly reduce flight
test time and software development costs, we have developed
a real-time UAV Emulation Environment (uavEE) using ROS
that interfaces with high fidelity simulators to simulate the
flight behavior of the aircraft. Our uavEE emulates the avionics
hardware by interfacing directly with the embedded hardware
used in real flight. The modularity of uavEE allows the integration
of countless test scenarios and applications. Furthermore,
we present an accurate data driven approach for modeling of
propulsion power of fixed-wing UAVs, which is integrated into
uavEE. Finally, uavEE and the proposed UAV Power Model have
been experimentally validated using a fixed-wing UAV testbed.
- Award ID(s):
- 1646383
- Publication Date:
- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10082990
- Journal Name:
- Proceedings of IEEE International Conference on Embedded and Real-Time Computing Systems and Applications (RTCSA)
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
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