HOVERING FLIGHT FOR A MICROMECHANICAL FLYING INSECT: MODELING AND ROBUST CONTROL SYNTHESIS

Abstract

This paper describes recent results on the design and simulation of a flight control strategy for the Micromechanical Flying Insect (MFI), a 10-25mm (wingtip-to-wingtip) device capable of sustained autonomous flight. Biologically inspired by the real insect's flight maneuver, position control is achieved via attitude control. The wings motion is parameterized by a small set of parameters which are sufficient to generate desired average torques to regulate its attitude. Position control is achieved through attitude control based on the linearized dynamics under small angle assumption near hovering. At the end of each wingbeat, the controller schedules the desired wings motion parameters according to state feedback errors. With respect to our previous work (Deng et al., 2001), we explicitly included the modeling approximations into the design of the flight controller. These errors include the time-varying nature of aerodynamic forces, the input saturation and linearization errors. The proposed controller was simulated with the Virtual Insect Flight Simulator, and the results show improved performance in both position and orientation stabilization.