A Compact Embedded Flight Parameter Detection System for Small Soaring UAVs

This article proposes a compact, lightweight, low-cost, and energy-efficient system to detect the air-relative flight parameters, which are essential for flight environment awareness of small soaring unmanned air vehicles (UAVs). Inspired by that some large birds with similar flight characteristics use distributed mechanoreceptors on or around follicles for airflow sensing and flight situation awareness, the proposed system consists of a group of micro piezoresistive barometric pressure sensors embedded in the skin of the wings for local total pressure measurements and a microcontroller for data acquisition and processing. A paired and symmetric sensor distribution design along with an iterative semiempirical robust regression model that is insensitive to outliers is proposed, allowing the system to simultaneously detect all three air-relative flight parameters with a desirable accuracy by using a limited number of sensors. General guidelines together with a comprehensive fluid simulation of a soaring UAV wing model are used to determine the ideal locations for sensor placement. This article further investigates the influence of the sensors’ number and placement on the performance of the proposed system. Finally, a soaring UAV wing with the proposed flight parameter detection system is fabricated, and wind-tunnel experiments are conducted to study and verify the effectiveness of the system.