Flight Dynamics and System Identification for Modern Feedback Control: Avian-Inspired Robots

Unmanned air vehicles are becoming increasingly popular alternatives for private applications which include, but are not limited to, fire fighting, search and rescue, atmospheric data collection, and crop surveys, to name a few. Among these vehicles are avian-inspired, flapping-wing designs, which are safe to operate near humans and are required to carry payloads while achieving manoeuverability and agility in low speed flight. Conventional methods and tools fall short of achieving the desired performance metrics and requirements of such craft. Flight dynamics and system identification for modern feedback control provides an in-depth study of the difficulties associated with achieving controlled performance in flapping-wing, avian-inspired flight, and a new model paradigm is derived using analytical and experimental methods, with which a controls designer may then apply familiar tools. This title consists of eight chapters and covers flapping-wing aircraft and flight dynamics, before looking at nonlinear, multibody modelling as well as flight testing and instrumentation. Later chapters examine system identification from flight test data, feedback control and linearization.

• Presents experimental flight data for validation and verification of modelled dynamics, thus illustrating the deficiencies and difficulties associated with modelling flapping-wing flight
• Derives a new flight dynamics model needed to model avian-inspired vehicles, based on nonlinear multibody dynamics
• Extracts aerodynamic models of flapping flight from experimental flight data and system identification techniques

Jared A. Grauer is a research aerospace engineer with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration at Langley Research Center. Prior to this he earned a PhD from the University of Maryland in Aerospace Engineering. His research is in system identification, feedback control, and unmanned air vehicle systems.

Dr. James E. Hubbard, Jr. is currently the Glenn L. Martin Institute Professor at the University of Maryland and resident in Hampton, Virginia. He has an engineering career that is distinguished by more than four decades of scholarship and innovation. He began his career in 1971 as an engineering officer in the U.S. Merchant Marine serving in Vietnam. At the age of 19 qualified for and received an Unlimited Horsepower, steam, and diesel engine Marine Engineering operator’s license from the U.S. Coast Guard and was one the youngest to get such an honor. He was also one of only a handful of African American Marine Engineers in the entire U.S. Merchant fleet. He also holds a B.S., M.S. and Phd. from the at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and during his time there he distinguished himself by receiving the Goodwin Medal for “Conspicuously Effective Teaching” and The Steward Award for Outstanding Community Service. His scholarship was also recognized as a Scott Foundation Fellow and a Vertical Flight Foundation Fellow. His work in the area of Adaptive Structures has received more than 2500 citations representing an average 100 citations a year for 25 years. He is internationally known and respected as a founding father of the field of Adaptive Structures and his original experiments in this area have become icons of the field and can be found in laboratories, classrooms and corporations around the globe. He has cofounded 3 companies and holds more than 2 dozen patents in the field of Adaptive Structures. He has received the “Key to the City” of his hometown of Danville, Virginia for lifetime achievement. He has also received the Lifetime Achievement Award of the SPIE. He has written several books in the field and more authored than 200 technical publications in his chosen field. He has also been recognized by his African American peers as the 2002 receipt of the Black Engineer of the Year “President’s Award”. His professional affiliations include, Senior Lifetime Member and Fellow of the AIAA, Fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, and Senior Member of the SPIE. Member of the National Academy of Engineering and the Virginia Academy of Science, Engineering, and Medicine.