In-flight wing deformation measurement system for small unmanned aerial vehicles

This paper presents a new method to measure wing deflections in flight for small UAVs. It employs a pair of high resolution stereo cameras and LED wing markers, as well as a small form factor computer for control and storage. Post-processing of all the data is done off-line. Accuracy benchmark tests are conducted. Finally, theoretical discussion of wing shape reconstruction is presented. The method employs numerical optimization by minimizing the difference between numerical geometrically nonlinear slender beam equations and observed markers points with associated uncertainties.