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Design and Development of Micro Aerial Vehicle at ITB

Conference Paper · May 2006

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 Design and Development of Micro Aerial Vehicle at ITB
Muljowidodo1 and Agus Budiyono2,*
1
Automation & Robotics Laboratory, Mechanical Eng. Dept
Bandung Institute of Technology
Jl. Ganesha 10, Bandung 40132, Indonesia
2
Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics
Bandung Institute of Technology
Jl. Ganesha 10, Bandung 40132, Indonesia
*
E-mail: agus.budiyono@ae.itb.ac.id Fax: +62-22-253-4164

PACS number: 47.54.Bd, 47.63.mf, 47.85.-g, 89.75.-k

Keywords: micro air vehicle (MAV), vertical take-off and landing, unmanned aerial vehicle, hovering vehicle.

ABSTRACT

The miniaturization technology for sensor and system has enabled the design and development of micro air vehicles
(MAVs) for different commercial and military applications. Having a small size and the corresponding low unit cost,
MAVs can be deployed as an efficient unobtrusive flight platform to access hazardous sites or to do aerial surveillance
in general with observation to electronic, acoustic, optical or chemical signatures. The level of size and cost allow the
MAVs to be set out as one-time-use or expendable aerial vehicles. The minimal footprint however comes at the price of
aerodynamic, control, propulsion and power challenges. Unlike a conventional aircraft, the interaction between
aerodynamic, propulsion and structural forces is not balance in the MAV design. The propulsion and aerodynamics
suffer from the sluggish flow of low Reynolds number. In general as the Reynolds number decreases, drag increases
with MAV wings having only about one-fourth the lift-to-drag of a conventional aircraft. The structural requirement on
the other hand does not pose any issue since using the current material technology the constructed airframe would be
strong enough to withstand any flight loads. The control problem arises due to the high sensitivity of MAVs to
turbulence and other aerodynamic disturbances. In addition, in low Re flow the aerodynamic control surface will have
degrading efficiency. The paper reports the design and development efforts of a micro air vehicle with vertical take-off
and landing (VTOL) capability at Bandung Institute of Technology. Key technology areas are identified and design
strategies are proposed to address the challenges of MAVs’ development. The proposed MAV design at ITB is
characterized by the use of two counter-rotating propellers as a means of propulsive and control device. The roll control
is achieved by manipulating the relative angular speed of the propellers. The gridded fuselage is designed to laminarize
the wake and vortex flow downstream the propellers in order to improve control surfaces efficiency.

I. INTRODUCTION
Recent years have witnessed more prevalent use of MAV for numerous civil and military missions [1-3]. A better
understanding of low Reynolds number aerodynamics is essential to the progress of MAV design and development. The
MAV system technologies are supported primarily by the advances in the miniaturization of sensors and actuators. Both
design and system of MAV are aimed at satisfying a distinct flight envelope associated with mission unachievable by
UAVs. The small footprint enables the MAV to be deployed to locate survivors as part of search and rescue mission,
scout enemy position, map hazardous territory, navigate urban buildings and interior spaces, and monitor lethal
chemicals or radioactive in the area inaccessible by human. The benefit of having the small size comes at the cost of
aerodynamic, control, propulsion and power challenges. Due the size and speed of the MAV, the flight regime is of low
Reynolds number in which the fluids behavior differs from what is normally observed in aerodynamics of air vehicles.
At lower Reynolds number the drag increases and lift-to-drag ratio decreases. The fluids flow in this flight regime is
sluggish to the effect that the aerodynamic control surfaces lose their efficiency. To attain maneuver capability thus a
number of approaches dictate different requirements. For a fixed wing MAV, the maneuverability by the application of
control surfaces can be achieved for high speed. While for some missions a high speed is applicable, it will be
restrictive for other missions such as navigating confined or interior spaces. On the other hand, rotary wing MAV can
offer a high degree of maneuverability in addition to the need of high speed operation. This type of MAV allows the
capability of vertical take-off and landing and therefore is appropriate for many kinds of missions. The drawback of
rotary wing MAV is due to the noise signature of the rotor. However, this limitation only applies to a penetration
mission in which the noise level should be minimal. Another approach is to use flapping wing MAV mimicking the
engineering of an insect [4, 8]. Research in this area has been gaining some interests and keen understanding of the
aerodynamic model and flapping mechanism is required to move the idea into practical applications.
The paper is focusing on the design and development of rotary wing MAV with the capability of vertical take-off
and landing. The work is part of a larger effort at Institut Teknologi Bandung aimed at designing, developing and
testing a practical VTOL micro air vehicle.

II. BASICS OF MAV

The miniaturization or downscaling of air vehicle dictates different design procedures for MAV. The normal
dominant factors in the design of most flight vehicles are the structure, the aerodynamics and the propulsion. In the
conventional flight vehicles, those factors play with roughly equal importance [6]. The following section summarizes
the study on the technical aspects of MAV. The more detail results can be found in [5,6].
1. Aerodynamics
Complex viscous effect of the low Reynolds number flow warrants the physical testing of MAV components
combined with appropriate aerodynamics analysis. At some range of scales, in certain flight modes, appropriate wing
motions can maintain the viscous flow close to conditions equivalent to dynamic stall, where local lift coefficient can
greatly exceed steady-state values. It must be noted however that in some other flight modes such as take-off and
landing, slow and hovering flight and rapid maneuver, the unsteady effects are prevalent. In view of lack design tools
for the flight regime, a flight testing of the complete MAV is advisable to be conducted at the early design phase.
2. Structure
Unlike the aerodynamic and control requirements, the structural design for MAV interacts weakly with
configurational design process. At the scale of MAV, the airframe with typical modern material will be strong enough
for any flight loads. Therefore, different from the structural design of conventional flight vehicles, the minimization of
weight due to the structure is no longer an issue. The primary weight of the MAV is mostly dictated by the power and
onboard avionics system.
3. Propulsion and Power
The first challenge of the MAV design has been the power density requirement. Simple calculation indicates that the
required power density of typical MAV is about 200 mW/g. For 30 minute endurance, the energy density is 360 J/g.
Table 1 gives the energy density for a variety of energy storage. From the table, it is evident that Lithium-based battery
can satisfy the above energy density requirement. Internal combustion engines are attractive power source for MAV due
to they high energy density. However, their miniaturization has not been mature and they are also very noisy. Research
effort has also been aimed at scaling down a jet engine such as micro gas turbine engines designed at Massachusetts
Institute of Technology.

Table 1 Energy density for various energy storage systems [6]

Storage system J/g

Steel spring 1.4
Rubber 10
NiCad battery 1.0 x 102
Lithium battery 3.6 x 102
Kevlar flywheel 1.6 x 103
Methanol 2.3 x 104
Fat 3.9 x 104
Gasoline 4.7 x 104
Plutonium 239 8.3 x 1010
Matter-antimatter 9.0 x 1012

4. Control
Given the size of the MAV, atmospheric turbulence will give marked effects to the flight control. The challenge of
the control design is finding the most effective control strategy under the limitation of power resource for disturbance
sensitive vehicles. The study shows that for model airplanes and low speed flight vehicles even mild turbulence has
quite severe effects in reducing the performance.
5. Flight systems
Given the size of the MAV, atmospheric turbulence will give marked effects to the flight control. The challenge of
the control design is finding the most effective control strategy under the limitation of power resource for disturbance
sensitive vehicles. The study shows that for model airplanes and low speed flight vehicles even mild turbulence has
quite severe effects in reducing the performance.

III. DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT OF MAV AT ITB

The presently proposed design at ITB is characterized by the use of two counter-rotating propellers for providing
vertical take-off and landing capability. The schematic diagram of the vehicle is given by Fig. 1. The wing span of the
MAV is 38 cm while the total length is approximately 25 cm. The three dimensional drawing is shown in Fig. 2.
Considering the required energy density, two Li- polymer batteries are used and they are embedded in the wing shown
as red rectangles in the figure.
Overall objective of the design is to achieve a maneuverable micro air vehicle in the low and high speed flight
regions. The low speed operation is represented by the hovering mode. In this mode the MAV behaves like a helicopter
with counter-rotating rotors. The roll control is achieved by manipulating the relative angular speed of the propellers.
The vertical motion can be controlled by manipulating the total lift as function of the rotor speed. The high speed flight
mode is achieved by gradually tilting the MAV into a horizontal attitude using the aerodynamic control surface. The
gridded fuselage is designed to laminarize the wake and vortex flow downstream the propellers in order to improve
control surfaces efficiency. In the current design, the pitching and yawing motion is made possible by the availability of
control surfaces analogous to elevator and rudder in the conventional aircraft configuration. The sideways movement or
translation, however, can not be realized using the available controls.
In this important to note in this regards, that a critical aspect of the VTOL vehicle design is the handling of the
transition dynamics. For a full scale vehicle, the transition between hover into forward flight (and vice versa) represents
one of the most complex dynamical behaviors. The first approach is to consider the dynamics as a linear time varying
system where the control and stability property would be fundamentally different from that of widely known time
invariant system. The control is then designed for the linear time varying model. The second approach is to model the
two flight modes as hybrid automata and the switch control can then be developed. Either way, the solution is not
straight forward. In the MAV context, the problem of the transition is more challenging due to the low Reynolds
number flow.

Fig. 1 Schematic diagram of ITB VTOL-MAV

 IV. TESTING OF VTOL MAV
The step-by-step testing is carried out to validate the design approach of ITB MAV. The first stage of the testing is
centered on the evaluation of the hovering performance. In the absence of the preliminary dynamics analysis using CFD
software or wind tunnel testing, a certain level of safety measure is considered for the flight testing of the VTOL MAV.
In the first series of hovering tests, the MAV is tethered to constrain the motion of the vehicle in anticipation to
unknown or unpredictable dynamics. The controllability of the MAV in the vertical direction is tested by scheduling the
rotor speed. Meanwhile, the rolling motion is realized by regulating the relative speed between the top and bottom
rotors.
The second stage of testing is the free flight mode without tether which is conducted after a high confidence in the
hovering controllability of the MAV has been achieved. To demonstrate the viability of the MAV deployability for
navigating confined spaces, the hovering test is conducted indoors. The final stage of the test will be the evaluation of
the transition dynamics from hovering mode into the forward flight. The setup of the transition dynamics test is
currently in progress.

Fig. 2 Three dimensional drawing of ITB VTOL-MAV

V. CONCLUDING REMARKS
The paper presents the design, development and testing of VTOL-MAV at Institut Teknologi Bandung. Key
technologies as well as primary design challenges have been identified. Rotary wing solution is presently selected as the
candidate for exploring the area of MAV both from the point of view of airframe design and system technology. The
current VTOL-MAV configuration is proposed as an approach to the design of an agile micro air vehicle covering low
and high speed flight regimes. Ongoing efforts will be focusing on enhancing the maneuverability of the MAV to
include the capability to fly sideways plus further verification of the transition dynamics between hover and forward
flight. Future extensions are also aimed at refining the model including the anticipation of an autonomous flight control.

REFERENCES

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