Model-free control of a flapping-wing flying microrobot

In this paper, we present a model-free experimental method to find a control strategy for achieving stable and autonomous, from a control perspective, flight of a dual-actuator biologically inspired flapping-wing flying microrobot. The main idea proposed in this work is the sequential tuning of parameters for an increasingly more complex strategy in order to sequentially accomplish more complex tasks: upright stable flight, straight vertical flight, and stable hovering with altitude and position control. Each term of the resulting multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) controller has a physical intuitive meaning and the control structure is relatively simple, such that, it could potentially be applied to other kinds of flapping-wing robots.