Publications related to Flight

Accurate and agile flight with winged drones

Drones hold promise to assist in civilian tasks. To realize this application, future drones must operate within large cities, covering large distances while navigating within cluttered urban landscapes. The increased efficiency of winged drones over rotary ...

EPFL2024

Method for wind harvesting and wind rejection in flying drones

Dario Floreano, Charalampos Vourtsis, Victor Casas Rochel, Nathan Samuel Müller, William John Stewart

The present invention concerns a method of manoeuvring a vertical take-off and landing, unmanned aerial drone (100) comprising at least an aerodynamic surface (101), wherein, during a flight of the drone, the aerodynamic surface generates lift and/or drag ...

2024

Aerodynamic modeling of a delta-wing UAV for model-based navigation

Jan Skaloud, Pasquale Longobardi

This study aims to identify an optimal, as well as practical, parametric structure for a delta-wing UAV aerodynamic model for the purpose of model-based navigation. We present a comprehensive procedure for characterizing the aerodynamics of this platform, ...

2024

Data from: Optimal blade pitch control for enhanced vertical-axis wind turbine performance

Karen Ann J Mulleners, Sébastien Le Fouest

This directory contains open-source data obtained using a single-bladed H-type vertical-axis wind turbine prototype with individual blade pitching. This data results from the optimisation of the blade's pitching kinematics using a genetic algorithm at two ...

Zenodo2024

Lumped Drag Model Identification and Real-Time External Force Detection for Rotary-Wing Micro Aerial Vehicles

Alcherio Martinoli, Lucas Cédric Wälti

This work focuses on understanding and identifying the drag forces applied to a rotary-wing Micro Aerial Vehicle (MAV). We propose a lumped drag model that concisely describes the aerodynamical forces the MAV is subject to, with a minimal set of parameters ...

IEEE2024

Wing and tail morphing in birds and drones

Enrico Ajanic

To aid humans in civilian tasks, future drones will have to operate in large cities that abound with difficult flight conditions such as confined spaces, obstacles, and turbulent air. Such drones must cruise efficiently to cover vast distances fast and als ...

EPFL2023

The effects of kinematics, flexibility, and planform on the vortex formation and aerodynamic performance of flapping wing flight

Alexander Gehrke

In this thesis, the aerodynamic challenges in flapping wing flight are addressed. In particular, the effects of different wing kinematics, flexibilities, and planforms on the the leading edge vortex development and aerodynamic performance are investigated. ...

EPFL2023

Wind Defiant Morphing Drones

Dario Floreano, Charalampos Vourtsis, Victor Casas Rochel, Nathan Samuel Müller, William John Stewart

Intense winds are a challenge for vertical take-off and landing drones with wings. In particular, in the hovering regime, wings are sensitive to wind currents that can be detrimental to their operational and energetic performances. Tail-sitters are particu ...

2023

Time scales of dynamic stall development on a vertical-axis wind turbine blade

Karen Ann J Mulleners, Sébastien Le Fouest, Daniel Marie Fernex

Vertical-axis wind turbines are excellent candidates to diversify wind energy technology, but their aerodynamic complexity limits industrial deployment. To improve the efficiency and lifespan of vertical-axis wind turbines, we desire data-driven models and ...

2023

Identifying aerodynamics of small fixed-wing drones using inertial measurements for model-based navigation

Jan Skaloud, Gabriel François Laupré

The success of drone missions is incumbent on an accurate determination of the drone pose and velocity, which are collectively estimated by fusing iner- tial measurement unit and global navigation satellite system (GNSS) mea- surements. However, during a G ...

2023

Sharp turning maneuvers with avian-inspired wing and tail morphing

Dario Floreano, Valentin Wüest, Enrico Ajanic, Mir Alikhan Bin Mohammad Feroskhan

Flight in dense environments, such as forests and cities requires drones to perform sharp turns. Although fixed-wing drones are aerodynamically and energetically more efficient than multicopters, they require a comparatively larger area to turn and thus ar ...

2022

How ornithopters can perch autonomously on a branch

Raphael Zufferey

Flapping wings produce lift and thrust in bio-inspired aerial robots, leading to quiet, safe and efficient flight. However, to extend their application scope, these robots must perch and land, a feat widely demonstrated by birds. Despite recent progress, f ...

Nature Portfolio2022

Flexural-tensegrity snapping tails for bio-inspired propulsion in fluids

Pedro Miguel Nunes Pereira de Almeida Reis, Claudio Boni

Many aquatic animals propel themselves by flapping their tails. Leveraging a recently proposed snapping cantilever beam based on the concept of flexural tensegrity, we propose a bio-inspired propulsion device. The design comprises a segmental beam with hol ...

ELSEVIER2022

A Lightweight Device for Energy Harvesting from Power Lines with a Fixed-Wing UAV

Dario Floreano, William John Stewart

Modern UAVs (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles) suffer from restrictions in flight range and time due to battery capacity limitations. One way to overcome these limitations is to harvest energy from overhead power lines. A growing body of scientific literature has ...

IEEE2022

Observing the Central Arctic Atmosphere and Surface with University of Colorado uncrewed aircraft systems

Julia Schmale, Radiance Flore Aurore Calmer

Over a five-month time window between March and July 2020, scientists deployed two small uncrewed aircraft systems (sUAS) to the central Arctic Ocean as part of legs three and four of the MOSAiC expedition. These sUAS were flown to measure the thermodynami ...

NATURE PORTFOLIO2022

Real-Time Nonlinear Model Predictive Control for Fast Mechatronic Systems

Petr Listov

This thesis presents an efficient and extensible numerical software framework for real-time model-based control. We are motivated by complex and challenging mechatronic applications spanning from flight control of fixed-wing aircraft and thrust vector cont ...

EPFL2022

Comparative dynamic flight stability of insect-inspired flapping-wing micro air vehicles in hover: Longitudinal and lateral motions

Hoang Vu Phan, Khanh Nguyen

In this paper, we compare the characteristics of hovering stability for two insect-inspired flapping-wing micro air vehicles (FW-MAVs) with different strategies to generate control moments for the longitudinal and lateral attitude controls. The two robots ...

2021

Calibration of Fixed-Wing UAV Aerodynamic Coefficients with Photogrammetry for VDM-based Navigation

Jan Skaloud, Gabriel François Laupré

Autonomous navigation is a crucial aspect for fixed-wing unmanned aerial vehicle operation when encountering disturbance or denial of GNSS signal reception. Vehicle dynamic model-based navigation improves the performance of methods based exclusively on int ...

2021

Phenomenology and scaling of optimal flapping wing kinematics

Karen Ann J Mulleners, Alexander Gehrke

Biological flapping wing fliers operate efficiently and robustly in a wide range of flight conditions and are a great source of inspiration to engineers. The unsteady aerodynamics of flapping wing flight are dominated by large-scale vortical structures tha ...

IOP PUBLISHING LTD2021

Experimental investigation and analytical modelling of active yaw control for wind farm power optimization

Fernando Porté Agel, Haohua Zong

In this study, the physics and effectiveness of active yaw control under various wind conditions are investigated systematically, based on wind tunnel experiments and a new analytical wind farm model. The power and wake velocity measurements of a three-row ...

Pergamon-Elsevier Science Ltd2021