Learning-based Path Tracking Control of a Flapping-wing Micro Air Vehicle

Abstract

Flapping-wing micro air vehicles (FWMAVs) become promising research platforms due to their advantages such as various maneuverability, and concealment. However, unsteady flow at low Reynolds number around the wings makes their dynamics time-varying and highly non-linear. It makes autonomous flight of FWMAV as a big challenge. In this paper, we suggest a model-based control strategy for FWMAV using learning architecture. For this task, we construct a ground station for logging flight data and control inputs, and train dynamics with a neural network. Then, we apply model predictive control (MPC) to the trained model. We validate our method by hardware experiments.