Because of the wing oscillatory motion, the flight dynamics of biological flyers as well as their man-made mimetic vehicles, flapping-wing micro-air-vehicles (FWMAVs), is typically represented as a nonlinear time-periodic system (NLTP). Moreover, its equilibrium configurations (e.g., hovering) are represented by periodic orbits instead of fixed points. In this work, we combine tools from geometric control theory and averaging to perform higher-order averaging analysis on the NLTP dynamics of FWMAVs near the hovering equilibrium. The objective is to achieve balance at hover; that is, to ensure a periodic solution whose velocities have zero-mean values.
['Ahmed M. Hassan', 'Haithem E. Taha']
Higher-order averaging analysis of the nonlinear time-periodic dynamics of hovering insects/flapping-wing micro-air-vehicles