Mitigating the Effects of Atmospheric Turbulence: Towards More Useful Micro Air Vehicles

Abstract : This report is the research summary of flying MAV experiments in turbulent flow, utilizing prior research measuring and reproducing aspects of the outdoor environment. Turbulence was replicated in a large wind engineering tunnel and was well mixed, thus replicating atmospheric turbulence under neutrally stable conditions far removed from local effects. Current studies are focused on using increasingly small fixed-wing and flapping-wing aircraft with IMU video tracking, and upstream flow measurements to correlate measured turbulence with vehicle disturbances. Rate, acceleration, force and pressure sensors are being evaluated to determine candidates for providing phase-advanced measurement of incipient turbulence, which can allow the aircraft to preemptively move the control surfaces to suppress attitude and position disturbances.