On the Design and Optimization of an Autonomous Microgravity Enabling Aerial Robot
This addresses the problem of enabling microgravity experiments for researchers, but it appears incremental as it builds on existing hardware and simulation methods.
The paper tackled the design of an autonomous aerial robot to achieve at least 4 seconds of microgravity with 0.001 g accuracy, validating feasibility through simulation and describing physical test bed development.
This paper describes the process and challenges behind the design and development of a micro-gravity enabling aerial robot. The vehicle, designed to provide at minimum 4 seconds of micro-gravity at an accuracy of .001 g's, is designed with suggestions and constraints from both academia and industry as well a regulatory agency. The feasibility of the flight mission is validated using a simulation environment, where models obtained from system identification of existing hardware are implemented to increase the fidelity of the simulation. The current development of a physical test bed is described. The vehicle employs both control and autonomy logic, which is developed in the Simulink environment and executed in a Pixhawk flight control board.