Micro air vehicle: architecture and implementation

This paper presents the development of an electrically powered micro air vehicle (MAV) with a wingspan of 360 mm. A miniature flight control system including a self-made micro video image system especially suitable for MAV is developed. The aerodynamic performance of several airfoil sections at low chords Reynolds number is analyzed in order to find an optimum airfoil section for the MAV prototype. A small-sized propulsion testing setup is built to measure the performance of the motor-gear-propeller-battery combination so that an efficient propulsion system can be obtained. The TH360 MAV with a payload of a self-made micro color video image system has been successfully tested in the real-time flight, where the real-time images of the ground target can be transmitted from the onboard video camera to the ground.