Development of a Rotorcraft Micro air Vehicle for Indoor Flight Research

Autonomous flight of micro air vehicles (MAVs) in hostile indoor environments poses significant challenges in terms of control and navigation. In order to support navigation and control research for indoor micro air vehicles, a four-wing tail-sitter type rotorcraft MAV weighing less than 350g has been designed in this paper. In an effort to achieve autonomous indoor flight, an embedded integrated avionic system has been developed. The modeling process has been conducted to obtain accurate six degrees of freedom dynamical model for the designed rotorcraft MAV. In addition, aerodynamic coefficients are evaluated from the results of Computational Fluid Dynamics A PI-ADRC double loop controller with inner-loop outer-loop control scheme has been proposed which takes into account the system’s nonlinearities and uncertainties. The proposed flight controller was implemented on the designed rotorcraft MAV that has undergone various simulation and indoor flight tests. Experimental results that demonstrate robustness of the proposed controller with respect to external disturbances and the capabilities of the designed rotorcraft MAV are presented.