AIAA Guidance, Navigation, and Control Conference and Exhibit
11 - 14 August 2003, Austin, Texas
ROLL CONTROL FOR A MICRO AIR VEHICLE
USING ACTIVE WING MORPHING
Helen M. Garcia , Mujahid Abdulrahim
University of Florida
Abstract
A micro air vehicle is a flight system being designed for
operation within urban environments. Such vehicles are
small and highly agile but often have limited control au-
thority. This paper investigates the use of morphing as
an effector to provide control authority. Simple mech-
anisms for morphing are designed to twist the wings of
a 24 in vehicle and to curl the wings of a 12 in vehicle.
Flight tests show the morphing is an excellent strategy
to command roll maneuvers. The resulting vehicles are
relatively easy to fly and consequently are suitable for
autopilot design and mission deployment.
Introduction
The role of aircraft is continually evolving to adapt to
new missions. An area of particular interest is operation
within urban environments. For example, a flight system
that could fly within the confines of a city to monitor the
presence of biological agents would be highly benefi-
cial. Such a flight system would provide rapid detec-
tion and map infected regions without requiring a team
of response personnel to be assembled and endangered.
Thus, the flight test community is aggressively pursu-
ing flight systems that are small and highly agile with
autonomous capability [8].
The concept of a micro air vehicle (MAV) is an es-
pecially attractive option for the missions of interest.
These vehicles are loosely defined by characteristics
such as wingspan less than 6 in and airspeeds less than
25 mph. Their small size enables them to maneuver
between buildings while their airspeed enables them to

 Graduate Student, hmg@ufl.edu, Student Member AIAA
Undergraduate Student, mujahid@ufl.edu, Student Member

AIAA
Assistant Professor, Department of Mechanical and Aerospace
Engineering, 231 Aerospace Building, Gainesville FL, 32611,
rick@mae.ufl.edu, Senior Member AIAA

Copyright c 2003 by Helen Garcia. Published by the American
Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Inc. with permission.
Copyright 2003 by Helen Garcia. Published by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Inc., with permission.
AIAA 2003-5347
AIAA-2003-5347


and Rick Lind
cover reasonable distances quickly. Furthermore, they
are quite unobtrusive, being difficult to see or hear, so as
not to disrupt activities near the flight path.
The University of Florida has developed a family of mi-
cro air vehicles that are relatively mature [9]. The vehi-
cles are constructed using carbon fiber for the fuselage
and plastic membrane for the wings. This construction
is lightweight and strong with good aerodynamic prop-
erties; however, control surfaces are not easily included
with the membrane wings. As such, the vehicles are
highly agile but have limited control authority [17].
The use of innovative control effectors is an area being
explored as an enabling technology for achieving mis-
sion capability. The current generation of MAVs uses
traditional effectors, specifically an elevator and rudder,
whose positions are commanded by a remote pilot. The
elevator presents adequate effectiveness for longitudi-
nal control but the rudder presents some difficulty for
lateral-directional control.
The concept of morphing presents several opportunities
for enabling control of a MAV [18]. Morphing is partic-
ularly appealing for twisting the wing and enabling roll
control. Wing twist is actually used on the current MAV
but in a passive sense. Essentially, the wing deforms un-
der loading in flight to produce a passive washout that
helps smooth the flight path. Such a concept can be
extended to allow greater twists that are actively com-
manded to generate large roll moments.
This paper considers using morphing for roll control on
two members from the family of flexible-wing MAV de-
signs. These vehicles have a 24 in and 12 in wing span.
The 24 in vehicle is morphed by rotating a torque rod
to cause wing twist. The 12 in vehicle is morphed by
pulling threads to cause increase in twist along with de-
crease in span. In each case, the mechanism for mor-
phing is quite simplistic but is certainly sufficient for in-
vestigating the control issues related to morphing. Flight
tests show that indeed the morphing provides significant
control authority for roll maneuvers.
 Micro Air Vehicles
The University of Florida has been extremely active in
the field of MAV design and testing. The team led by
Dr. Peter Ifju is especially accomplished in that they
have won various aspects of the Micro Aerial Vehi-
cle Competition, sponsored by the International Society
of Structural and Multidisciplinary Optimization, each
year from 1999 to 2003. His team has designed, built,
and flown many unique designs.
The current generation of MAV is based on a flexible-
wing design [9]. Members of this family have been gen-
erated with wingspan ranging from 4 in to 30 in. The
vehicles have excellent flight mechanics and are able to
operate at very high angle of attack [16]. These vehicles
are being used for several studies including aerodynam-
ics [15] and vision-based control [7].
Most of the MAVs currently being flown at the Univer-
sity of Florida have a similarity; namely, these aircraft
are demonstrably difficult to fly. Such difficulty is some-
what expected given that the aircraft are highly agile and
maneuverable but rudder and elevator are the only con-
trol surfaces available. The rudder mainly excites the
dutch roll mode so steering and gust rejection are really
accomplished using the coupled roll and yaw motion
resulting from dutch roll dynamics. Such an approach
is obviously not optimal but traditional ailerons are not
feasible on this type of aircraft.
This paper will consider morphing as a control effec-
tor for a pair of micro air vehicles with different di-
mensions. The MAV shown in Figure 1, with a 24 in
wingspan, and the MAV shown in Figure 2, with a 12 in
wingspan will be used to demonstrate morphing for con-
trol.
Figure 1: MAV with 24 in Wingspan
2
Figure 2: MAV with 12 in Wingspan
The airframes are constructed entirely of composite
carbon-fiber. Each fuselage is a two-piece monocoque
structure designed to house flight components, control
effectors, and instrumentation. The 12 in MAV has a
conventional empennage which is fixed to the fuselage
with elevator control surfaces which are hinged to the
horizontal stabilizers. On the 24 in MAV, the control
surfaces are the elevator and rudder surfaces which are
hinged to the horizontal and vertical stabilizers respec-
tively.
The wings are constructed using similar composite tech-
niques as the fuselage and empennage. The leading edge
consists of carbon-fiber weave with battens of unidirec-
tional carbon attached to the underside and extending to
the trailing edge. The composite wing on the 12 in MAV
skeleton is covered with an extensible membrane skin of
latex rubber. The covering on the wing of the 24 in MAV
consists of a membrane skin of thin translucent plastic.
In each case, the battens provide the strength needed to
support the air loads while the membrane provides the
lifting surface.
The design of the wings was optimized to minimize
weight; however, certain biological properties can be as-
sociated with them. For instance, the battens act simi-
larly to a skeleton for birds and insects while the mem-
brane can be associated with feathers or skin. Flying
creatures in nature make use of the resultant flexibility to
maximize their flight performance. For the MAV, such
flexibility is actually used already in a passive sense.
The flexible nature of the wing gives rise to the mecha-
nism of adaptive washout which permits small changes
in wing shape in response to gusty wind conditions.
Actuation of the MAV control surfaces is accomplished
with two control effectors or servos mounted inside the
fuselage. These devices actuate the control surfaces by
rotating an arm and pushing or pulling the pushrod. The
control surfaces of the elevator and rudder are connected
to the servo using a spring steel pushrod. The approxi-
mate range of motion for each is given in Table 1.
Effector Range of Motion
elevator  
The continuing maturation of materials and controls
technology is leading to consideration of more extreme
types of morphing for control. Aircraft can be morphed
in several biologically-inspired way that are appropriate
for control. For instance, birds have very complex wing
shapes during flight with large variations in sweep and
twist along the entire span. Furthermore, the span itself
changes based on flight condition for many birds. The
complicated morphing is actuated using joints, such as
 to  elbow and wrist, along with the feathers to achieve many
rudder 
 to 

 wing shapes.
Table 1: Range of Control Effectors
The MAV is equipped with instrumentation that is
housed within the fuselage. This instrumentation in-
cludes servos for actuation, sensors for measurement,
and a board for data acquisition. The measurements con-
sist of 3-axis gyros and 3-axis accelerometers along with
the servo command. All sensing and actuation data is
recorded using a 7 gram micro data acquisition board
( DAS) developed by NASA Langley Research Center
specifically for MAVs. The  DAS has the capability to
record 27 analog channels which is sufficient for the cur-
rent sensor package. The data is sampled at 50 to 100Hz
and is resolved using a 12-bit analog-digital converter.
The data is recorded in a 4 MB flash chip on-board the
DAS and is downloaded to a PC at the end of each flight.
Also, each vehicle uses an electric motor for propul-
sion. The duration of flights varies depending on the
amount of batteries that are mounted in the fuselage and
the power setting of the motor. In general, flights up to
10 minutes are easily achieved for the 12 in MAV and
up to 15 minutes for the 24 in MAV.
Morphing
The concept of morphing is not, strictly speaking, a
well-defined idea. A morphing aircraft is generally
accepted to be an aircraft whose shape changes dur-
ing flight to optimize performance [18]. Such changes
might include span, chord, camber, area, thickness, as-
pect ratio, planform and any other metric related to
shape. The morphing can even be applied to a control
surface to eliminate hinges [14].
The use of morphing as a control effector is obviously
quite common. The most famous example is probably
the Wright flyer with which the pilot used cables to twist
the wings. More recent examples include aircraft with
variable sweep such as the F-14.
3
Programs by DARPA and NASA have been extensively
studying the concept of morphing. These studies have
shown the aerodynamic benefits; however, the use of
morphing for control design has not been studied ex-
tensively. The limited research into control has actu-
ally considered static issues. An aircraft with morph-
ing has been shown to have good performance when
fixed at different configurations [3]. Control was consid-
ered for morphing in a related study but only considered
the amount of actuation energy needed to cause morph-
ing [10]. The amount of control authority was also stud-
ied for smart materials embedded in a structure in the
context of steady-state open-loop controlled flight [5].
The issue of control design for morphing systems has
partly been overlooked because of the lack of experi-
mental testbeds. Many mechanisms for morphing have
been constructed but they are not yet implemented on
a flight vehicle. NASA has constructed a wing with
morphing camber [6]. A set of smart spars has been
built that provide many types of morphing [1]. Mech-
anisms have also been built such as a telescoping spar
to morph aspect ratio [2] and an inflatable actuator to
change sweep [12]. In each case, the mechanisms are
too heavy for a flight system so only wind tunnel test-
ing of a static mount has been performed. An inflatable
concept has actually been taken to flight [4] but the mor-
phing is a single one-time inflation so is not used for
maneuvering control.
A project particularly relevant to the study of morph-
ing for control is the F/A-18 Active Aeroelastic Wing
(AAW) [13]. The AAW is using wing twist to alter the
aeroservoelastic dynamics and generate roll moments.
The morphing is actually a passive effect resulting from
moving leading-edge surfaces of the flexible wing. That
testbed used a simple mechanism to generate morphing
in order to study the resulting loads and control issues.
A MAV is an especially appropriate platform for con-
sideration of morphing. The flexibility of the membrane
enables the shape of the wings to be easily changed. The
resulting change will obviously affect the dynamics and The morphing resulting from actuation of the torque
act as an effector to provide control authority. As such, rods causes deformation as shown in Figure 4.
the morphing of a MAV adds very little cost but pro-
vides tremendous benefit. This paper will consider sim-
ple strategies to provide morphing to emphasize control
issues. Essentially, the methods of morphing are not
considered as much as the dynamics of morphing.

24 in MAV with Morphing

Aircraft

A type of morphing is applied to the MAV with 24 in

wing span shown in Figure 1. This vehicle consists of
a carbon composite frame with a plastic membrane skin
wing. The original construction includes a rudder and
elevator as control surfaces. The basic properties of the
24 in MAV are given in Table 2.

Property Value
Wing Span 24
Wing Area 100 
Wing Loading 20.32  !#"$
Aspect Ratio 5.76
Powerplant Electric motor w/ 2.25 propeller
Total Weight 400 g

Table 2: Properties of the 24 in MAV
Morphing
A simple strategy is used to induce morphing for this
MAV. A torque rod lies along each wing extending from
servos in the fuselage as shown in Figure 3. The rods are
sewn into the leading edge of the membrane so move-
ment of the rod causes movement of the membrane.
Figure 4: Rear View of the 24 in MAV with Undeflected (top)
and Morphed (bottom) Wing
The effect of the morphing is seen to act as a wing warp-
ing. Essentially, the chord, along which the outer part
of the torque rod lies, rotates around the leading edge.
This rotation changes the twist along the span. The lead-
ing edge remains mostly affected but the trailing edge
clearly undergoes significant changes.

The morphing is actually quite similar in nature to

ailerons. The outboard portion of the trailing edge ro-
tates when using either traditional ailerons or this type
of morphing. Also, the use of a pair of torque rods al-
lows the morphing to act equal and opposite on each
wing.

Vehicle Development

This MAV was originally constructed to demonstrate

Figure 3: Wing with Torque Rod
flight characteristics of a 24 in vehicle. Several flights
were made using only the rudder and elevator as con-
trol effectors. The plane was somewhat difficult to fly
but basic maneuvering was clearly achieved. After this
demonstration, the vehicle was retired in the baseline
configuration.

4
The concept of using torque rods for morphing was con- 15

ceived as a generic type of control effector. The 24 in

10
MAV was selected for the study because it was large

Rudder Command
enough and readily available. The installation merely re- 5
quired mounting servos in the fuselage, drilling holes in
the bulkhead, connected torque rods, and finally sewing 0

the rods into the membrane wing.

5

The initial flight of the vehicle immediately showed out- 10

standing flight performance. Roll maneuvers were eas-
ily performed in response to morphing commands. The 15
0 1 2 3 4 5 6
controllability resulting from the morphing was suffi- Time(sec)
cient so that no further types of morphing were consid-
ered. Figure 5: Doublet Command to Rudder Servo

Flight Characteristics
Flight testing of the active wing-shaping 24 in MAV is
performed in the open area of a radio controlled (R/C)
model field during which wind conditions range from
calm to 7 knots throughout the flights. Once the flight
control and instrumentation systems are powered and
initialized, the MAV is hand-launched into the wind.
This launch is an effective method to quickly and reli-
ably allow the MAV to reach flying speed and begin a
climb to altitude.
The roll rate and yaw rate measured in response to this
command are shown in Figure 6 and Figure 7. The
roll rate is sufficiently large and indicates the rudder is
able to provide lateral-directional authority; however,
the yaw rate is clearly larger than desired. Actually,
the yaw rate is similar in magnitude to the roll rate so
the lateral-directional dynamics are very tightly coupled.
The effect of the rudder in exciting the dutch roll dynam-
ics is clearly evidenced in this response.
150

100
This airplane is controlled by a pilot on the ground who
Roll Rate (deg/sec)

maneuvers the airplane visually by operating an R/C 50

transmitter. The data acquisition system begins record- 0

ing as soon as the motor is powered.
50
This aircraft design allows either rudder or wing shap-
100
ing to be used as the primary lateral control for standard
maneuvering. The airplane is controlled in this manner 150

through turns, climbs, and level flight until a suitable al- 200
0 1 2 3 4 5
titude is reached. At altitude, the airplane is trimmed for Time(sec)
straight and level flight. This trim establishes a neutral
reference point for all the control surfaces and facilitates
performing flight test maneuvers. Figure 6: Roll Rate in Response to Rudder Doublet
Open-loop data is taken to indicate the flight characteris-
150
tics of the MAV. Specifically, the rates and accelerations
are measured in response to doublets commanded sep- 100
Yaw Rate (deg/sec)

arately to the servos. Several sets of doublets are com- 50

manded ranging in magnitude and duration to obtain a
rich set of flight data. 0

50
The dynamics of the MAV in response to rudder com-
mands is investigated to indicate the performance of the 100

traditional configuration for this MAV. A representative 150

doublet command is shown in Figure 5.
200
0 1 2 3 4 5
Time(sec)
Figure 7: Yaw Rate in Response to Rudder Doublet

5
Doublets, such as shown in Figure 8, are also com- Modeling
manded to the morphing servo.
The data from open-loop flights is then used to approxi-
8 mate a linear time-domain model using an ARX approx-
6 imation [11]. This model is generated by computing
optimal coefficients to match properties observed in the
Morphing Command

4
data. The assumption of linearity is reasonable since the
2 maneuvers are small doublets around a trim condition.
0
The resulting model, having poles at -4.95 and -0.1194,
2
is used to simulate responses of the aircraft. The simu-
4 lated and measured values of roll rate are shown in Fig-
6 ure 11 while the measured and simulated values of yaw
8
rate are shown in Figure 12.
0 0.5 1 1.5 2
Time(sec) 150

Figure 8: Doublet Command to Morphing Servo 100

Roll Rate (deg/sec)

50
The roll rate in Figure 9 and yaw rate in Figure 10 are
measured in response to the doublet. These measure- 0
ments indicate the roll rate is considerably higher than 50
the yaw rate. Thus, the morphing is clearly an attractive
approach for roll control because of the nearly-pure roll 100

motion measured in response to morphing commands. 150

150 200
0 0.5 1 1.5 2
Time(sec)
100

%&%'%
Roll Rate (deg/sec)

50
Figure 11: Simulated ( ) and Actual () Roll Rate
Responses to a Doublet
0
150
50
100
100
Yaw Rate (deg/sec)

50
150
0
200
0 1 2 3 4 5
Time(sec) 50

100
Figure 9: Roll Rate in Response to Morphing Doublet
150

150
200
0 0.5 1 1.5 2
100 Time(sec)
Yaw Rate (deg/sec)

50 Figure 12: Simulated ( %'%'% ) and Actual () Yaw Rate

Responses to a Doublet
0

50 The simulated responses show good correlation with the

100
actual data. The model is thus considered a reasonable
representation of the aircraft. The existence of such a
150 model is important for future design of autopilot con-
200 trollers but it is also valuable for interpreting the morph-
0 1 2 3 4 5
Time(sec) ing. Essentially, the ability to identify a linear model
with poles relating to the roll convergence and spiral
Figure 10: Yaw Rate in Response to Morphing Doublet convergence modes indicate the aircraft with morphing
acts like an aircraft with ailerons.

6
Analysis
The flight characteristics of the vehicle are actually quite
impressive to view. The measurements of roll rate and
yaw rate indicate the mathematical nature of the charac-
teristics; however, a qualitative evaluation is also quite
useful. Such an evaluation is best achieved in associa-
tion with step commands given to each servo. The step
to the rudder causes the airplane to roll but the coupled
yaw results in a flight path similar to a corkscrew spiral.
Conversely, the step to the morphing causes the airplane
to roll with a minimum of yaw so the flight path is nearly
a straight line. In other words, the morphing induces al-
most pure roll and allows much more accurate tracking
of desired flight paths.
Also, the morphing results in considerably high roll
rates than the rudder. This result is quite interesting
given that the rudder deflection is quite large but the
morphing, as shown in Figure 4, does not cause overly
large deflection. Thus, a small amount of morphing is
sufficient to cause a dramatic response from the aircraft.
12 in MAV with Morphing
Aircraft
A type of wing morphing is also applied to the 12 in
MAV shown in Figure 2. The basic properties of this
vehicle are given in Table 3.
Property Value
Wingspan 12
Wing Area 44
Wing Loading 14.19  !#"$
Aspect Ratio 3.27
Powerplant Electric motor w/ propeller
Total Weight 123g
Table 3: Properties of the 12 in MAV
The vehicle is actually designed specifically to inves-
tigate morphing. As such, the only control surface is
an elevator. Control authority for lateral-directional dy-
namics can only be provided by augmenting the vehicle
with a morphing strategy.
Morphing
The 12 in MAV is designed to allow for a more compli-
cated type of morphing than is used for the 24 in MAV.
The wings of this smaller vehicle are constructed from
latex whereas the wings of the larger vehicle are con-
7
structed from mylar. Consequently, the wings of the
smaller vehicle are considerably more flexible, and thus
easier to morph, than the wings of the larger vehicle.
This flexibility allows simple mechanisms to again be
appropriate for generating morphing and allow control
issues to be investigated.
The high flexibility of the wings for this MAV allow con-
sideration of morphing beyond simply warping. More
specifically, this vehicle is used to consider morphing
that affects the twist and span of the wings. A torque
rod, as used for the 24 in MAV, would clearly not be
appropriate for such a morphing. Instead, the rod was
replaced with threads.
The morphing strategy for this MAV is shown in Fig-
ure 13. Kevlar threads are strung between a servo in
the fuselage and points near the outboard of the wings.
These threads are incredibly strong and the minor stress
received during flight is not sufficient to cause any
stretching.
Figure 13: Wing with Kevlar Threads
The morphing achieved by this strategy is directly de-
pendent upon the attachment points of the threads. The
attachment of the threads to the fuselage is near the lead-
ing edge of the wings. The corresponding attachment
to the wings is actually at separate points. One attach-
ment point is near the mid-chord point at the wing-tip
outboard. Another attachment point is the trailing edge
near the two-thirds span location.
The morphing that results by actuating the servo is
shown in Figure 14. The servo rotates and causes the
threads to pull against the attachments on the wing.
The morphing resulting from this strategy is clearly be-
yond simple warping. In this case, the pulling of the
threads toward the leading-edge attachment at the fuse-
lage causes the wing to both twist and bend. The effect
is similar in nature to a curling of the wings. The basic
parameters that are readily observed to change are the
twist, camber, chord, and span.

Figure 14: Side View of the 12 in MAV with Undeflected
(top) and Morphed (bottom) Wing
The morphing is designed for a biologically-inspired ef-
fect. The displacement of the wing resembles shapes
observed in birds like gulls. For instance, the bend-
ing along the span is concentrated around a single point
which correlates to the elbow in birds. The twist is con-
centrated near the trailing-edge outboard which corre-
lates with the feathers near the wrist of birds. A more
formal approach to this concept is being designed by
NASA but but this current vehicle is sufficient to inves-
tigate control issues [6].
Only a single wing is altered in Figure 2. The vehicle
actually contains separate servos for each wing that al-
low the morphing to act simultaneously on both wings;
however, this paper will restrict attention to morphing a
single wing. The current objective is to study roll con-
trol but the longitudinal issues will be investigated in the
future.
Also, this vehicle is ideal for the focus of this paper.
Specifically, the morphing strategy is quite simple but
the morphing effect is complicated. This approach al-
lows the control issues associated with morphing to be
easily studied. The vehicle is not designed to study the
optimal strategies for morphing; rather, the vehicle is
designed to study the optimal strategies for control.
8
Vehicle Development
The initial implementation of this morphing strategy
was originally attempted on a MAV with 10 in span.
That vehicle, like the current vehicle, has latex cover-
ing on the wings so was very easy to morph in flight.
The 10 in MAV was chosen for the initial study because
it was already constructed and could be readily adapted
for the new study. The flights of that vehicle were quite
promising and clearly indicated the morphing provided
better control authority than a rudder.
A new vehicle was constructed to be slightly large be-
cause the equipment needed for closed-loop controlled
flight would not fit within the fuselage of the 10 in ve-
hicle. This new 12 in vehicle was essentially a scaled
version of the original vehicle except for the wing con-
struction. The original version had a single structure for
the wings that mounted atop the fuselage. The new ver-
sion had separate wings that attached to posts on each
side of the fuselage.
The first flights of the 12 in MAV indicated a problem
with the wing construction. Namely, a single layer of
carbon fiber for the leading edge was not sufficient. The
10 in MAV used a single layer for the leading edge but
the wing was a single structure and thus had enough
stiffness. The 12 in MAV had separate wings so the
stiffness was noticeably less. The first flights of the new
MAV resulted in the leading edge folding over and col-
lapsing when loads were applied. A second layer of car-
bon fiber was applied to the leading edge near the root
to alleviate this problem.
The next set of flights of the 12 in MAV indicated a
problem with the thread connection. The morphing of
the 10 in MAV used only a single thread attached to the
outboard of the trailing edge and this style was used for
the 12 in MAV. Unfortunately the battens on the larger
MAV were spaced farther apart than on the smaller MAV
so the wing was weaker. The leading edge on the 12 in
MAV would now remain properly shaped but the trail-
ing edge would collapse when loaded. This problem was
circumvented by attaching a second thread to the trailing
edge of the wing and allowing the morphing actuation to
provide strength to support the loads.
Flight Characteristics
Flight testing of the 12 in MAV is performed similarly
to the 24 in MAV. Namely, the MAV is hand launched
into the incoming wing for takeoff, the airplane climbs
to altitude, the pilot trims the vehicle, and maneuvers
about trim are performed.
This MAV is then tested by commanding doublets to the
morphing servos. A representative doublet command is
shown in Figure 15. The units of this command are just
count commands to the servo because the actual deflec-
tion caused by morphing is difficult to quantify.
40
Morphing Command (deg)
The roll rate is clearly correlating well with the com-
manded doublet and demonstrates the morphing is ca-
pable of commanding roll maneuvers. The yaw rate is
somewhat more difficult to understand. Notably, the air-
craft builds up yaw rate approximately 0.5 seconds after
the onset of the doublet command. This flight character-
istic results from the single-sided nature of the morph-
ing. Essentially, the wing that is morphed loses lift but

30
also increases drag. The loss of lift immediately causes
20
rolling and the increase of drag causes a slight delay in
10 building up the yaw rate.
0
Modeling
10
A linear model is identified from the flight data. A 6-
20
state model was originally identified but reduced to a 3-
30 state model with poles at -7.521 and )(+* ,- .0/12.3*4-(25 .
0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 1.2 1.4
Time(sec) The simulated responses of this model are compared
with measured values of roll rate in Figure 18 and yaw
Figure 15: Doublet Command to Morphing Servo rate in Figure 19.

The responses to the morphing doublets are measured 80

by the on-board data acquisition system. The roll rate is

presented in Figure 16 and the yaw rate is presented in Roll Rate (deg/sec) 60

Figure 17.
40

80
20

60
Roll Rate (deg/sec)

40
20

20 0 0.5 1 1.5
Time(sec)
0
Figure 18: Simulated( %6%6% ) and Actual(-) Roll Rate Re-
20 sponses to a Doublet
0 0.5 1 1.5
Time(sec) 80

Figure 16: Roll Rate in Response to Morphing Doublet 60

Yaw Rate (deg/sec)

40
80

20
60
Yaw Rate (deg/sec)

0
40

20
20
0 0.5 1 1.5
0 Time(sec)

20 Figure 19: Simulated( %7%6% ) and Actual(-) Yaw Rate Re-

0 0.5
Time(sec)
Figure 17: Yaw Rate in Response to Morphing Doublet
1 1.5
sponses to a Doublet
The responses of the model are reasonably close to the
measured responses. The roll rate shows a good correla-

9
tion although the yaw rate is somewhat less accurate.
The model contains a roll convergence mode which,
based on the accuracy of roll simulations, is accepted.
The model also contains a dutch roll mode which at-
tempts to capture the dynamics associated with yaw rate.
The inability of this mode to represent the yaw dynam-
ics may indicate some nonlinearity is associated with the
vehicle. Such nonlinear dynamics would not be unex-
pected given the extreme nature of the morphing and the
asymmetry resulting from morphing a single wing.
Conclusion
This paper has demonstrated that morphing can be an
effective means to achieve roll control for a micro air
vehicle. The flexible nature of the wings enables their
shapes to be easily altered. Simple mechanisms, such
as a torque rod and Kevlar threads, are used on a 24 in
MAV and a 12 in MAV. In each case, the vehicle was
flown using morphing as the primary effector for roll
maneuvers. The flight data clearly shows the morphing
produces significant roll rates and provides significant
controllability.
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