Dynamics and Control of a Flapping Wing UAV with Abdomen Undulation Inspired by Monarch Butterfly

Abstract: This paper presents a dynamic model and a control system for a flapping-wing unmanned aerial vehicle. Inspired by flight characteristics captured from live Monarch butterflies, a new dynamic model is presented to account the effects of low-frequency flapping and abdomen undulation. We developed it according to Lagrangian mechanics on a Lie group to obtain an elegant, global formulation of dynamics. Then, a feedback control system is presented to asymptotically stabilize periodic motions with active motion of abdomen, and its stability is verified according to Floquet theory. In particular, it is illustrated that the abdomen undulation has the desirable effects of reducing the variation of the total energy and also improving the stability of the proposed control system.