Authors:Zuqiang Yang, Yi Yang, Xingxiu He, Weicheng Qi Abstract: International Journal of Micro Air Vehicles, Volume 16, Issue , January-December 2024. Coverage in unknown environment is a commonly concerned problem in ground mapping field of Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV). Based on the concept of incremental cell construction, a practical online coverage path planning method is proposed for mapping in unknown environments with obstacles and boundaries. This method consists of the Boustrophedon motion and D* algorithm. Based on the information from onboard ranging sensor, the UAV uses Boustrophedon motion to incrementally construct coverage cells while exploring the environment. When there are no alternative cells for Boustrophedon motion, the D* algorithm is utilized to plan the backtracking path to the next starting point. Particularly, the backtracking path replanning will be carried out if an unknown obstacle suddenly appears on the path. The static and hardware-in-loop dynamic simulation results show that the proposed method can achieve near-complete coverage in complex unknown environments with low computational and sensor accuracy requirements. Citation: International Journal of Micro Air Vehicles PubDate: 2024-08-09T06:52:20Z DOI: 10.1177/17568293241262323 Issue No:Vol. 16 (2024)
Authors:Jiaze Cai, Hunter Denton, Moble Benedict, Hao Kang Abstract: International Journal of Micro Air Vehicles, Volume 16, Issue , January-December 2024. This paper describes the development and flight testing of a tail-sitter unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) platform that has the potential to be tube-launched. Integrated with vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) capability, the platform can perform high-endurance loiter tasks along with low-speed and hovering flights, and land vertically in limited spaces. The current design utilizes a thrust-vectored counter-rotating coaxial propeller combined with a foldable conventional fixed-wing to accomplish both vertical and horizontal flights. A feedback control strategy capable of stabilizing and controlling the vehicle in both vertical and horizontal flight was designed and implemented on a custom-designed 1.7-gram autopilot. Several tests were conducted in hover and edgewise flight with aggressive pilot inputs to demonstrate the controllability of the aircraft even in the presence of moderate wind gusts. Additionally, transition flight tests were also performed, which demonstrated the vehicle’s capability of transitioning from vertical to fixed-wing horizontal flight using thrust-vectoring-based pitch control. Citation: International Journal of Micro Air Vehicles PubDate: 2024-05-10T05:11:37Z DOI: 10.1177/17568293241254045 Issue No:Vol. 16 (2024)
Authors:Linkai Tang, Min Chang, Yaping Huang, Siliang Zu, Junqiang Bai Abstract: International Journal of Micro Air Vehicles, Volume 16, Issue , January-December 2024. To achieve underactuated control, a novel swashplateless rotor configuration of asymmetric inclined hinges which can be driven by periodic sinusoidal torque is studied, hopefully eliminating the conventional swashplate mechanism and multiple actuators. Therefore, the traditional mechanism can be intelligently replaced by software. However, high-frequency torque variation will invariably result in vibration noise and energy loss.Thus it is critical to properly design the swashplateless rotor in order to achieve a control process with less torque variation. As a result, in both numerical simulation and experiments, we performed sensitivity analyses on related design parameters such as hinge eccentricity, hinge inclined angle, and wingtip hammer position. The parameter effect on swashplateless rotor control was discovered through the analyses, and the basic law of its design was obtained. Citation: International Journal of Micro Air Vehicles PubDate: 2024-03-12T03:28:47Z DOI: 10.1177/17568293241238019 Issue No:Vol. 16 (2024)
Open Access journal
