Spider Monkey Metaheuristic Tuning of Model Predictive Control with Perched Landing Stabilities for Novel Auxetic Landing Foot in Drones

The study focuses on improving drone landing gear dynamics through an innovative auxetic foot design, leveraging Spider Monkey Optimization for Model Predictive Control adjustment, facilitated by an Arduino-MATLAB interface. The auxetic foot design incorporates materials with a negative Poisson ratio, which allows the foot to expand and enhance energy absorption during landings. This design improves stability and safety during the perched landing process. The SMO-MPC approach is used to optimise the control of the perched landing gear. SMO, inspired by spider monkey search behaviour, optimises auxetic foot control input sequences with the limits of rotational displacement (theta = 30 deg to -30 deg) on the prediction horizon to improve landing gear performance. The real-time implementation of SMO-MPC is achieved through an Arduino-MATLAB interface on quadcopter drone. A comparative analysis is conducted to evaluate the benefits of SMO-MPC compared to conventional MPC methods. The results show that the SMO-MPC approach with auxetic foot design surpasses conventional MPC methods in terms of landing performance with 14.6 % improvement in damping force control and control of aerodynamic stability with pitch of 34.16 %, yaw of 16.87 %, and roll of 31.74 %.