Related papers: On the Shape Optimization of Flapping Wings and th…
Wing-assisted inclined running (WAIR) observed in some young birds, is an attractive maneuver that can be extended to legged aerial systems. This study proposes a control method using a modified Variable Length Inverted Pendulum (VLIP) by…
Hybrid unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) integrate the efficient forward flight of fixed-wing and vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) capabilities of multicopter UAVs. This paper presents the modeling, control and simulation of a new type of…
Bristled and membranous insect wings have co-evolved despite apparently serving the same functionality. We emulate flight physics using an automated free-fall experiment to better understand how and why several distinct wing forms may have…
Rigid link flapping mechanisms remain the most practical choice for flapping wing micro-aerial vehicles (MAVs) to carry useful payloads and onboard batteries for free flight due to their long-term durability and reliability. However, MAVs…
The design and control of winged aircraft and drones is an iterative process aimed at identifying a compromise of mission-specific costs and constraints. When agility is required, shape-shifting (morphing) drones represent an efficient…
High resolution direct numerical simulations of rotating and flapping bumblebee wings are presented and their aerodynamics is studied focusing on the role of leading edge vortices and the associated helicity production. We first study the…
Forward-swept wings offer unique advantages in the aerodynamic performance of air vehicles. However, the low-Reynolds-number characteristics of such wings have not been explored in the past. In this work, we numerically study laminar…
This paper presents a method for incorporating control analysis into design optimization for highly-maneuverable aircraft. By studying reachable sets for aircraft dynamics, we ensure that the optimizer will take the aircraft's controlled…
Aircraft failures alter the aircraft dynamics and cause maneuvering flight envelope to change. Such envelope variations are nonlinear and generally unpredictable by the pilot as they are governed by the aircraft's complex dynamics. Hence,…
Many methodologies have been proposed to quickly identify among a very large number of flight conditions and maneuvers (i.e., steady, quasi-steady and unsteady loads cases) the ones which give the worst values for structural sizing (e.g.,…
Wing flapping is one of the most widespread propulsion methods found in nature; however, the current understanding of the aerodynamics in bird wakes is incomplete. The role of the unsteady motion in the flow and its contribution to the…
Flapping flight and swimming are increasingly studied both due to their intrinsic scientific richness and their applicability to novel robotic systems. Strip theory is often applied to flapping wings, but such modeling is only rigorously…
We report direct numerical simulations of a pair of wings in horizontal tandem configuration, to analyze the effect of their aspect ratio on the flow and the aerodynamic performance of the system. The wings are immersed in a uniform…
A vortex-lattice method for wing aerodynamics that uses nonlinear airfoil data is presented. Two applications of this procedure are presented: Direct Design of a Flying Wing and Inverse Identification from wind tunnel measurements with…
Unsteady inviscid flow models of wings and airfoils have been developed to study the aerodynamics of natural and man-made flyers. Vortex methods have been extensively applied to reduce the dimensionality of these aerodynamic models, based…
This paper aims to improve the reliability of optimal control using models constructed by machine learning methods. Optimal control problems based on such models are generally non-convex and difficult to solve online. In this paper, we…
We propose an enhanced wall-boundary treatment for the lattice Boltzmann method (LBM), designed for high-Reynolds-number turbulent flows on adaptively refined Cartesian grids. The method improves the slip-velocity bounce-back scheme by…
Recently, Model Predictive Contouring Control (MPCC) has arisen as the state-of-the-art approach for model-based agile flight. MPCC benefits from great flexibility in trading-off between progress maximization and path following at runtime…
This paper studies a new latency optimization problem in unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs)-enabled federated learning (FL) with integrated sensing and communication. In this setup, distributed UAVs participate in model training using sensed…
This paper presents real-time guidance strategies for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) that can be used to enhance their flight endurance by utilizing {\sl insitu} measurements of wind speeds and wind gradients. In these strategies, periodic…