Adaptive Control of a Flapping Wing Robot Inspired by Bat Flight

This paper describes the formulation of the equations of kinematics for a flapping wing robot inspired by observations of bats in flight, the derivation of the governing equations of motion for the robot, and the construction of an adaptive controller to track the observed flapping motion. The kinematics of the articulated flapping wings is represented using the Denavit-Hartenberg convention to facilitate a compact and simple description of the degrees of freedom of the robot that can be used by biologists to summarize assumptions on bat motion. The equations of motion of the bat robotic system are derived using Lagrange’s equations in which the virtual work of the pressure forces on the wings is calculated by assuming a quasi-steady approximation of the aerodynamic forces. The derived controller guarantees asymptotic convergence of the tracking error and derivative of the tracking error. Additionally, the convergence of estimates of the lift and drag acting on each wing section is established whenever standard persistency of excitation conditions hold.