Design and Development of a Miniaturized Roto–Translational Motion Platform for Microaerial Vehicle Identification

Accurate system identification (SI) is essential for flight controller design of unmanned aerial vehicles and microaerial vehicles (MAVs). SI can be performed either in frequency or time domain using flight test data. As flight testing is often costly and may even lead to catastrophic events before some flight stability analysis is at hand, a low-cost 5 degree-of-freedom free motion platform (FMP) is designed and used for initial identification of MAVs via wind tunnel testing. A typical MAV is constructed as a test case and equipped with inertial sensors for testing and validation purposes. The proposed FMP allows for both rotational as well as translational motions that in turn provide for a more realistic data acquisition. The MAV is tested in a wind tunnel, while its sensors data are transmitted through a wireless system for SI. The identification procedure is performed in frequency domain using available commercial tools, and also in the time domain via utility of Kalman filtering technique. The results indicate that the developed low-cost FMP is an effective and reliable tool for system and parameter identification of MAVs.