Low-Complexity Performance Enhancing Flapping Control for Two-Section FAVs: Design, Analysis, and Experiments

This article deals with the prescribed performance flapping control problem of a two-section flapping-wing air vehicle (FAV) under convergence time constraint and indecipherable disturbance in the steady-state flapping stage. A low-complexity performance enhancing flapping control scheme is developed. In this scheme, by designing an appointed-time performance envelope, a flapping controller with an attenuated proportional gain and a constant integral gain is derived. Closed-loop stability is analyzed based on the newly constructed two-section flapping control model, which is in an affine form. It is shown that prescribed flapping control performance is achieved without any model parameter using the proposed scheme. Meanwhile, the settling time of flapping process is assignable, and the steady-state boundary crossing is eliminated. Comparative simulations and experiments are both provided to verify the effectiveness of the scheme.