The U.S. commercial space launch industry has changed considerably since the enactment of the Commercial Space Launch Amendments Act of 2004. FAA is required to license or permit commercial space launches, but to allow the space tourism industry to develop, the act prohibited FAA from regulating crew and spaceflight participant safety before 2012—a moratorium that was later extended but will now expire on September 30, 2015. Since October 2014, there have been three mishaps involving FAA licensed or permitted launches.

美聯邦航空廳(Federal Aviation Administration)의 航空機 製作檢査 制度의 現況

Theory Of Wing Sections Including A Summary Of Airfoil Data

Insects are among the most agile natural flyers. Hypotheses on their flight control cannot always be validated by experiments with animals or tethered robots. To this end, we developed a programmable and agile autonomous free-flying robot controlled through bio-inspired motion changes of its flapping wings. Despite being 55 times the size of a fruit fly, the robot can accurately mimic the rapid escape maneuvers of flies, including a correcting yaw rotation toward the escape heading. Because the robot's yaw control was turned off, we showed that these yaw rotations result from passive, translation-induced aerodynamic coupling between the yaw torque and the roll and pitch torques produced throughout the maneuver. The robot enables new methods for studying animal flight, and its flight characteristics allow for real-world flight missions.

A tailless aerial robotic flapper reveals that flies use torque coupling in rapid banked turns

Flight Vehicle System Identification: A Time-Domain MethodologyJategaonkarR. V., Progress in Aeronautics and Astronautics, 2nd ed., AIAA, Reston, VA, 2015, 648 pp., $119.95.

An experimental study of surface wettability effects on dynamic ice accretion process over an UAS propeller model

Robotic vehicles that are capable of autonomously transitioning between various terrains and fluids have received notable attention in the past decade due to their potential to navigate previously unexplored and/or unpredictable environments. Specifically, aerial-aquatic mobility will enable robots to operate in cluttered aquatic environments and carry out a variety of sensing tasks. One of the principal challenges in the development of such vehicles is that the transition from water to flight is a power-intensive process. At a small scale, this is made more difficult by the limitations of electromechanical actuation and the unfavorable scaling of the physics involved. This paper investigates the use of solid reactants as a combustion gas source for consecutive aquatic jump-gliding sequences. We present an untethered robot that is capable of multiple launches from the water surface and of transitioning from jetting to a glide. The power required for aquatic jump-gliding is obtained by reacting calcium carbide powder with the available environmental water to produce combustible acetylene gas, allowing the robot to rapidly reach flight speed from water. The 160-gram robot could achieve a flight distance of 26 meters using 0.2 gram of calcium carbide. Here, the combustion process, jetting phase, and glide were modeled numerically and compared with experimental results. Combustion pressure and inertial measurements were collected on board during flight, and the vehicle trajectory and speed were analyzed using external tracking data. The proposed propulsion approach offers a promising solution for future high-power density aerial-aquatic propulsion in robotics.

https://robotics.sciencemag.org/content/robotics/4/34/eaax7330.full-text.pdf

Consecutive aquatic jump-gliding with water-reactive fuel

A time-varying model for the forward flight dynamics of a flapping-wing micro aerial vehicle is identified from free-flight optical tracking data. The model is validated and used to assess the validity of the widely applied time-scale separation assumption. Based on this assumption, each aerodynamic force and moment is formulated as a linear addition of decoupled time-averaged and time-varying submodels. The resulting aerodynamic models are incorporated in a set of linearized equations of motion, yielding a simulation-capable full dynamic model. The time-averaged component includes both the longitudinal and the lateral aerodynamics and is assumed to be linear. The time-varying component is modeled as a third-order Fourier series, which approximates the flapping dynamics effectively. Combining both components yields a more complete and realistic simulation. Results suggest that while in steady flight the time-scale separation assumption applies well during maneuvers the time-varying dynamics are not fully ...

Time-Varying Model Identification of Flapping-Wing Vehicle Dynamics Using Flight Data

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have been shown to be useful for the installation of wireless sensor networks (WSNs). More notably, the accurate placement of sensor nodes using UAVs, opens opportunities for many industrial and scientific uses, in particular, in hazardous environments or inaccessible locations. This publication proposes and demonstrates a new aerial sensor placement method based on impulsive launching. Since direct physical interaction is not required, sensor deployment can be achieved in cluttered environments where the target location cannot be safely approached by the UAV, such as under the forest canopy. The proposed method is based on mechanical energy storage and an ultralight shape memory alloy (SMA) trigger. The developed aerial system weighs a total of 650 grams and can execute up to 17 deployments on a single battery charge. The system deploys sensors of 30 grams up to 4 meters from a target with an accuracy of ±10 cm. The aerial deployment method is validated through more than 80 successful deployments in indoor and outdoor environments. The proposed approach can be integrated in field operations and complement other robotic or manual sensor placement procedures. This would bring benefits for demanding industrial applications, scientific field work, smart cities and hazardous environments [Video attachment: https://youtu.be/duPRXCyo6cY].

/pdf/unmanned-aerial-sensor-placement-for-cluttered-environments-480iwxfvla.pdf

Unmanned Aerial Sensor Placement for Cluttered Environments

Flapping-wing aerodynamic models that are accurate, computationally efficient and physically meaningful, are challenging to obtain. Such models are essential to design flapping-wing micro air vehicles and to develop advanced controllers enhancing the autonomy of such vehicles. In this work, a phenomenological model is developed for the time-resolved aerodynamic forces on clap-and-fling ornithopters. The model is based on quasi-steady theory and accounts for inertial, circulatory, added mass and viscous forces. It extends existing quasi-steady approaches by: including a fling circulation factor to account for unsteady wing-wing interaction, considering real platform-specific wing kinematics and different flight regimes. The model parameters are estimated from wind tunnel measurements conducted on a real test platform. Comparison to wind tunnel data shows that the model predicts the lift forces on the test platform accurately, and accounts for wing-wing interaction effectively. Additionally, validation tests with real free-flight data show that lift forces can be predicted with considerable accuracy in different flight regimes. The complete parameter-varying model represents a wide range of flight conditions, is computationally simple, physically meaningful and requires few measurements. It is therefore potentially useful for both control design and preliminary conceptual studies for developing new platforms.

Quasi-steady aerodynamic model of clap-and-fling flapping MAV and validation using free-flight data.

Aerial-aquatic robots possess the unique ability of operating in both air and water. However, this capability comes with tremendous challenges, such as communication incompatibility, increased airborne mass, potentially inefficient operation in each of the environments and manufacturing difficulties. Such robots, therefore, typically have small payloads and a limited operational envelope, often making their field usage impractical. We propose a novel robotic water sampling approach that combines the robust technologies of multirotors and underwater micro-vehicles into a single integrated tool usable for field operations. The proposed solution encompasses a multirotor capable of landing and floating on the water, and a tethered mobile underwater pod that can be deployed to depths of several meters. The pod is controlled remotely in three dimensions and transmits video feed and sensor data via the floating multirotor back to the user. The `dual-robot' approach considerably simplifies robotic underwater monitoring, while also taking advantage of the fact that multirotors can travel long distances, fly over obstacles, carry payloads and manoeuvre through difficult terrain, while submersible robots are ideal for underwater sampling or manipulation. The presented system can perform challenging tasks which would otherwise require boats or submarines. The ability to collect aquatic images, samples and metrics will be invaluable for ecology and aquatic research, supporting our understanding of local climate in difficult-to-access environments [Video attachment: https://youtu.be/v4xWmEHUSM4].

S. F. Armanini

Papers

Consecutive aquatic jump-gliding with water-reactive fuel

Time-Varying Model Identification of Flapping-Wing Vehicle Dynamics Using Flight Data

Unmanned Aerial Sensor Placement for Cluttered Environments

Quasi-steady aerodynamic model of clap-and-fling flapping MAV and validation using free-flight data.

MEDUSA: A Multi-Environment Dual-Robot for Underwater Sample Acquisition