Flight Control System for a Micromechanical Flying Insect: Architecture and Implementation

This paper describes recent results on the design and simulation of a flight control system for Micromechanical Flying Insect (MFI), a 10-25 mm (wingtip-to-wingtip) device eventually capable of sustained autonomous flight. The biologically inspired system architecture results in a hierarchical structure of different control methodologies, which give the possibility to plan complex missions from a sequence of simple flight modes and maneuvers. As a case study, a stabilizing hovering control scheme is presented and simulated with VIFS, a software simulator for insect flight.