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Monocopters are nature-inspired, single-wing, rotating aerial vehicles that fly by spinning their entire body. Meanwhile, bicopters are twin propeller-based aerial vehicles that control their attitude by changing the direction of thrust from the motors using two servos. In this paper, we present a novel single-wing aerial vehicle, which can fly in both the monocopter and bicopter modes. To enhance its maneuverability while still being in the air, the platform can perform a mid-air transition from one mode to another. To achieve this, we fused the attributes of monocopter and bicopter, while allowing the monocopter to maintain its natural shape for flight. Considering forces and torques experienced by both modes of flight, the dynamics are described, and a cascaded control strategy is developed. A novel approach is proposed to control the angular velocity of the monocopter. An innovative blending and transition method of controllers for both modes is developed to allow transition between the two modes. We constructed a prototype to demonstrate the flight of the aerial vehicle in both modes. The results verify the proposed concept for the design of the aerial vehicle, along with the control strategy implemented for the control over the states during the flight modes as well as the transition between the two modes.

Inspired by the self-rotating motion of the descending maple seeds, we introduce a novel modular aerial robotic platform-ARROWs. With customized wing and control modules, ARROWs can be easily reassembled into different configurations. Unlike conventional multirotor aerial vehicles which rely on the direct thrust from propellers, ARROWs can generate more lift by their revolving wings. However, the complex dynamics causes difficulties in flight controller development. In this work, we first analyze the flight dynamics by considering a combination of effects from the propeller, aerodynamic force on the wing, as well as self-rotating motion. As a result, a cascaded flight controller with a unified framework is designed based on reduced flight dynamics and relaxed hovering conditions to achieve stable flights in all proposed configurations. In addition, a set of inertial measurement units is employed for each flight module to estimate the flight configuration to overcome the dynamic uncertainties caused by manual reconstruction. Finally, our proposed platform and flight control strategy are validated using several flight experiments in 12 different configurations (include both centrosymmetric and centrally asymmetric cases). The results show an average position error of 8.9 cm with a deviation of 2.4 cm among all configurations in hovering tests.

In this paper, we introduce a novel rotary wing platform, that can fold and expand its wings during flight. The design of the rotorcraft is based on the monocopter platform, which are inspired from the flight of Samara seeds. The wings are constructed by applying origami technique to fold them in flight. Two configurations are presented where the folding of the wing is based on active and passive folding mechanisms. The two configurations can reduce their overall length by approximately 39% and 65% while in flight. A cyclic controller is implemented for controlling the translational motion, where the direction is controlled by pulsing the motors at specific instance during each cycle of rotation. We have presented experimental results to prove the control of our platform in different modes while in flight. The presented platforms enhances the practical uses of monocopter platform by providing it with the ability to reduce its footprint while in flight actively, and by allowing them to dive through the air without any additional actuator.

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