Parallelism In Stability Of Dynamic Soaring Orbits And Powerless Ascent/Descent

Abstract

Dynamic Soaring is a technique of maintaining flight by utilizing the wind shear. It is observed among birds like albatrosses and offers promise in the flight of UAVs. Earlier works on dynamic soaring have focused on trajectory generation algorithms. More recent works have studied the stability of dynamic soaring orbits. In this paper, we consider a powerless steady climb and descent case of a UAV in the presence of linear wind shear. We study, compare, and discuss a similarity in trend between the eigenvalues of this case and dynamic soaring orbits.