American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics
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AIAA-2001-0127
Development of the Black Widow Micro Air Vehicle
Joel M. Grasmeyer* and Matthew T. Keennon†
AeroVironment, Inc.
4685-3H Industrial St.
Simi Valley, CA 93063
This paper describes the development of the Black Widow Micro Air Vehicle (MAV) over
the past 4 years. An MAV has generally been defined as having a span of less than 6 inches,
and a mass of less than 100 grams. The Black Widow is a 6-inch span, fixed-wing aircraft
with a color video camera that downlinks live video to the pilot. It flies at 30 mph, with an
endurance of 30 minutes, and a maximum communications range of 2 km. The vehicle has
an autopilot, which features altitude hold, airspeed hold, heading hold, and yaw damping.
The electronic subsystems are among the smallest and lightest in the world, including a 2-
gram camera, a 2-gram video downlink transmitter, and a 5-gram fully proportional radio
control system with 0.5-gram actuators. A Multidisciplinary Design Optimization
methodology with a genetic algorithm was used to integrate the MAV subsystems and
optimize the vehicle for maximum endurance. Some of the potential missions for MAVs are
visual reconnaissance, situational awareness, damage assessment, surveillance, biological or
chemical agent sensing, and communications relay. In addition to these military missions,
there are several commercial applications, such as search and rescue, border patrol, air
sampling, police surveillance, and field research.
Introduction*
The first feasibility study for Micro Air Vehicles
(MAVs) was performed by the RAND Corporation in
1993.1 The authors indicated that the development of
insect-size flying and crawling systems could help give
the US a significant military advantage in the coming
years. During the following two years, a more detailed
study was performed at Lincoln Laboratory.2 This study
resulted in a DARPA workshop on MAVs in 1995. In
the fall of 1996, DARPA funded further MAV studies
under the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR)
program. AeroVironment performed a Phase I study,
which concluded that a six-inch MAV was feasible. In
the spring of 1998, AeroVironment was awarded a
Phase II SBIR contract, which resulted in the current
Black Widow MAV configuration.
Several universities have also been involved in
MAV research. Competitions have been held since
1997 at the University of Florida and Arizona State
University. The goals of the competitions have been to
observe a target located 600 m from the launch site and
to keep a two-ounce payload aloft for at least 2 minutes.
*AeroMechanical Engineer, Member AIAA
†Program Manager
Copyright © 2001 by Joel M. Grasmeyer. Published by
the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics,
Inc. with permission.
Early Prototypes
In the early stages of the Black Widow MAV program,
several prototypes were built to explore the 6-inch
aircraft design space, which was largely unknown at the
time. About twenty balsa wood gliders with different
wing configurations were built, and simple tests were
performed to determine the lift-to-drag ratios. These
tests showed that the disc configuration had some
promise, so a powered version was built next. The
powered 6-inch disc performed a 9-second flight in the
spring of 1996. The endurance was gradually increased
using the disc configuration, culminating in a 16-minute
flight using lithium batteries in November of 1997. This
MAV weighed 40 grams, it was manually controlled by
elevons, and it did not carry a payload (Figure 1).
Figure 1: Early MAV prototype
American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics
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Multidisciplinary Design Optimization
The early prototypes demonstrated that a 6-inch aircraft
was feasible. However, the MAV still required a video
camera and an advanced control system that would
allow operation by an unskilled operator. Since the
prototype MAVs were clearly not capable of handling
the extra weight and power of these additional systems,
a more rigorous design approach was required to
continue evolving the system toward maturity.
For this reason, a Multidisciplinary Design
Optimization (MDO) methodology was developed in
the summer of 1998 to maximize the performance of
the MAVs. The goal of the MDO methodology was to
create a computer-simulated environment in which the
optimum MAV configuration could evolve. The
simulated environment consists of physics-based
models of the key aspects of the MAV design space, as
shown in Table 1. The design variables used for the
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