Theoretical and Experimental Investigation on Body Control after Perching for Flapping-Wing Robots: Extending the Workspace for Manipulation

Abstract

This work investigates a post-perching control for flappingwing flying robots (FWFRs) to control and move the system on a branch. The flapping-wing aerial systems are lightweight platforms that mimic the birds' flight and they could serve for monitoring and inspection. The interaction of the FWFRs with the environment needs to fulfill perching on a branch, as a preliminary step, then moving the body to gain access to the desired pose and workspace. The leg of the robot moves the bird to the proper position. This work studies the mathematical modeling, simulation, and experimental implementation of this topic. A three-degree-of-freedom system is presented to model the robot's body, tail, and leg. A nonlinear controller, so-called feedback linearization (FL) is used for the control of the robot. A linear quadratic regulator (LQR), plus an integrator, are embedded in the FL controller to deliver optimal control for the linearized system. The simulation results show that the actuated leg extends the workspace of the robot significantly and confirms the effectiveness of the proposed strategy for body control. Experimental results present similar behavior of the system using the proposed controller for different desired setpoints.

A 94.1 g scissors-type dual-arm cooperative manipulator for plant sampling by an ornithopter using a vision detection system

“…Stabilization after perching was also covered for this particular concept in literature [9, 10]. A special case is the motion of the flapping-wing robot in a branch after perching that needs modification of the body of the robot for gaining a better position and also manipulation after that [11]. Luque et al presented body control after perching for robotics birds using closed-loop feedback controllers and optimal feedback linearization to control the servo-actuated leg.…”

“…The global picture of the flapping-wing robot operation for perching and manipulation.The launching, controlled flight, and perching phases are presented in ref [8],. and stabilization after perching is covered in ref [11]…”